Amphetamines and Pearls & The Geranium Kiss

Two novels introduce the violent mysteries of Scott Mitchell, the toughest detective in London, who taught the British Isles what it means to be hardboiled.



Amphetamines and Pearls marked the debut of Scott Mitchell, a down-on-his-luck London PI who ventures to Nottingham for the sake of an old friend, iconic singer Candi Carter. Mitchell finds Carter dead in her living room, a trickle of blood coming from her mouth and a bullet hole in her chest. Her body is still warm. But before he can get out of there, he’s blackjacked, and when he comes to, he’s picked up by a pair of cops who beat him senseless and drag him to the nearest cell. Mitchell is having a hell of a day—and things will only get worse from here.



In The Geranium Kiss, Mitchell takes a job from Crosby Blake, one of the most powerful men in London—and one of the most dangerous. Blake’s niece, Cathy, has been kidnapped, and he wants Mitchell to handle the ransom payment. The kidnappers want £20,000, and about 20,000 things will go wrong before this case is finished. To bring Cathy home alive, Mitchell will have to untangle a web of deadly lies that threaten to bind him tighter with every question he asks.



Written in the hardboiled spirit of Raymond Chandler and John D. MacDonald, the Scott Mitchell novels are a unique hybrid of American and British mysteries. Created by John Harvey, who would later create the legendary sleuth Charlie Resnick, these novels are as tough as they come.



Praise for the Scott Mitchell Mysteries

“Harvey’s police procedurals are in a class by themselves—near Dickensian in their portrayal of human frailty; cinematic in their quick changes of scene and character; totally convincing in their plotting and motivation.” —Kirkus Reviews on Cutting Edge



Praise for John Harvey

“If John Harvey’s novels were songs, Charlie Parker would play them.” —The New York Times Book Review



“Harvey reminds me of Graham Greene, a stylist who tells you everything you need to know while keeping the prose clean and simple. It’s a very realistic style that draws you into the story without the writer getting in the way.” —Elmore Leonard



John Harvey (b. 1938) is an incredibly prolific British mystery writer. The author of more than one hundred books, as well as poetry and scripts for television and radio, Harvey did not begin writing professionally until 1975. Until then he was a teacher, educated at Goldsmiths College, London, who taught literature, drama, and film at colleges across England. After cutting his teeth on paperback fiction, Harvey debuted his most famous character, Charlie Resnick, in 1989’s Lonely Hearts, which the English Times called one o...