THE BELL OF GIRARDIUS is a deliciously dark crime novel. It features a laconic and appealingly self-deprecating British private investigator, Joe Milo, his enigmatic Jamaican sidekick, Jonah, plus a Technicolor cast of villains, lovers, killers, liars, cheats, bloodsuckers and miscreant clowns, with morality and political correctness a fool’s distraction. The novel capitalizes on the rich seam of rumour, skulduggery, myth, mystery and legend surrounding the medieval Knights Templar (incarnated here as 21st century Satanists), as immortalized in The Da Vinci Code. It also pays homage to the classic occult novels of Dennis Wheatley, particularly The Devil Rides Out, reprinted sixteen times in the 60s and 70s, and filmed by Hammer Films.

Milo, its protagonist, believes that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. He has an agile wit, a remorseless put-down of the second-rate in people, yet a soupçon of compassion hidden beneath a sardonically flip exterior. Booze and women are his recreational pursuits. His conscience is personal, rather than social, and he uses a sardonic wisecrack as effectively as his left hook. His verbal mots justes are used not for triumphalism, but rather to promote action and reaction. At heart he is a loner and a sceptic. Hypocrisy, officialdom, injustice and prevarication he suffers badly. He will appeal to readers who like their private dicks to be hip, tough, politically incorrect, street-smart, casually efficient, literate, and to have moral complexity as he continues the tradition of the American literary and cinematic-noir PI. Milo’s cryptic, street-wise and taciturn (he thinks Harpo Marx talked too much) sidekick, Jonah, has a day job running a testosterone fuelled gym in London’s Earls Court, and he would have represented Great Britain as an Olympic boxer, but for 'a slight misunderstanding about a urine sample.’

The novel’s hard-core antagonists are part of a clandestine group, The Temple Of Baphomet, who derive their name and sinister purpose from the idol supposedly worshipped in secret by the Knights Templar, as revealed in the ‘confessions’ extracted under torture in the early 14th century, by Philip IV of France. These present-day Knights Templar use as their graven image the fanciful illustration by the 19th century occultist Eliphas Lévi, of Baphomet, a goat-like creature, the deity of sorcerer’s Sabbats, which was also popularized by Goya. This is their Unholy Grail. Intrinsic to their charter is a free-for-all of felony, obscenity, sacrilege, devil-worship, renunciation of the Holy Trinity, and irreligious acts as detailed in the trumped-up charges used against the original Templars when they were arrested on Friday October 13th, 1307. Their symbol is a fiery red cross, its upright post fractured, set against a white shield. These Satanists are base, amoral and categorically ungodly, and the bell in the book’s title is the necromantic Bell of Girardius, used as an adjunct in necromancy since Roman times. 

Add to the recipe Olga, a Mayfair Russian madam and Tanya, her ex-Spetsnaz minder; Olga’s missing coked-up sister Avril; Jay, the Girl Friday with the unrequited hots for Milo; Tiger Lil, a Detective Inspector whose MA thesis was on the less savory aspects of the Marquis de Sade; and stir in Grigory Zeltin, Petar Savic, Gerd Muller and his irreligious bunch of Satanists; spice with a couple of inept Albanian hit men and a seedy paparazzo; simmer a while, then bring slowly to the boil and the Cecil B DeMille finale. The Bell of Girardius, hard-boiled, is the dish to relish.