I know, I know, two years is a long time to wait for a sequel. But here – just in time for Christmas – is the follow-up to my debut novel, The Tin Face Parade.

This one is called The Porcelain Poet. And if the title makes you think of toilets then there’s a good reason for that. It’s named after a character who scrawls graffiti on the cubicle doors in the gents’ bogs at a steel factory.

Here’s the blurb for you. As the Liverpudlians once wrote: ‘It took me years to write – will you take a look?’

Summer 1909. London.

Amid the sweat and oil of an East London steel factory, the Porcelain Poet scrawls his rhymes on toilet doors – witty, abusive and anonymous. Then comes the week that the graffiti stops abruptly, just as an unpopular shop steward is found face-down in the Thames. Across the city, other union men have been going missing too – but what’s happening to them and why?

Once again, it’s up to Harry Catcliffe, jaded industrialist and reluctant investigator, to try and get to the bottom of it. Aided by his unpredictable sidekick, ex-marine Jabez Potter, Harry’s hunt takes him from the squalid rookeries of Lambeth to the fragrant heather moors of rural Yorkshire.