White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings closes the triad begun with Lud Heat (1975) and Suicide Bridge (1979): it opens, hopefully, a second triad.
The letter from Douglas Oliver was written in response to Suicide Bridge and is published here with his permission.
Sub-texts have been cannibalised from many sources; some are obvious, some obscure. This is not the place to list them.
The contemporary characters represented in this book are, of course, fictional; though invented more by themselves than by the supposed author.
The Victorian characters lived under the names that I have given them: their behaviour is dictated by sources other than historical record.