Marguerite, a down-at-heel detective, investigates, in minute and comically digressive detail, the disappearance of Harold Absalon, the Mayor's transport advisor. He follows, and then is followed by, Harold's wife Isobel and their young child around an unnamed modern city resembling London.

What links a cafe in Antarctica, a factory for producing electronic tracking tags and a casino where gamblers can wager their shoes? They're among the multiple venues where award-winning writer Tania Hershman sets her unique tales in this spellbinding debut collection.

A mix of memoir and narrative non-fiction, White Spines is a book about Nicholas Royle's passion for Picador's fiction publishing from the 1970s to the end of the 1990s.