The Heights

The Heights is a London crime novel about luxury property, dirty money, class, corruption, art, celebrity, policing and the moral rot hidden inside “super-prime” real estate. It begins with the death of a young night concierge in one of London’s most exclusive apartment buildings and ends with the building’s developer throwing himself from his own penthouse after the whole structure of lies around him collapses.

The central investigators are Detective Sergeant Gillian “Gish” Gish and Detective Inspector Jack Milton. Milton is close to retirement, experienced, weary and still nursing old obsessions. Gish is younger, sharp, Tottenham-raised, and often underestimated by the older men around her. She cares for her mother Jacqui, who needs daily carers, and carries a strong sense of the London outside the moneyed bubble she is investigating. Their relationship is professional but complicated: Milton respects her intelligence, but he also withholds things, especially when the case begins to threaten an old friend.

The murder happens at The Heights, an eighteen-storey luxury block facing Hyde Park. It is owned and mythologised by developer Allan Franklyn, who lives in the duplex penthouse and talks about the building as if it were flesh and blood. The place has a spa, pool, gym, cinema, car park, rooftop gardens, expensive art and absurd concierge-level services. It is also half-empty, full of shell owners, overseas money, absent investors, celebrities, gangsters, oligarchs and people who want discretion more than community.