London, 1968. The Runaway. A young woman is found naked and strangled in an alley in well-to-do St John’s Wood. The African. The neighbours would love to pin it on the enigmatic black stranger who has just moved in. The Pariah. Detective Sergeant Cathal Breen is convinced there’s more to the case than anyone wants to admit; no-one’s listening. The Outsider. In walks WPC Helen Tozer – awkward chatterbox, farmgirl, and the first woman to enter the murder unit – and gives Breen a breakthrough. A Song from Dead Lips is a crime thriller that shows the glorified sixties close-up, as it really was – comfortably sexist, racially prejudiced, class-bound and crawling with corruption.