The Diamond Hook - James Quartermain

When cynical private detective Raven meets ‘a wild girl shot full of heroin and whisky’, who also carries a pistol, in a Mayfair mews, it is only the start of a tortuous and violent case involving the mysterious Diamond Ltd corporation and a trade in heroin on an industrial scale which is blighting the Swinging Sixties. Raven is plunged into the dark side of the era of ‘peace and love’, neither of which are in much evidence as he follows the heroin trail to France after being forcibly turned into an addict himself. First published in 1970, The Diamond Hook was one of earliest thrillers to take a brutal, no-holds-barred look at the growing traffic in drugs. ‘James Quartermain’ was the pen-name of novelist, playwright and illustrator James Broom-Lynne, who designed the book jackets for some of the best-selling thrillers of the 1960s, including The Dolly Dolly Spy and several of Dick Francis’ thrillers.