Anthony Quinn (2)Reviews

This engrossing novel captures the changing life of London in the late 1970s. It does this through the tension and suspicion arising from the Irish republican Army’s bombing campaign, police corruption and the febrile atmosphere of strikes as the Labour government of James Callaghan is crumbling, to be replaced by a Conservative one lead by Margaret Thatcher. This mix impinges upon the lives of a cast of characters, whose fates are intertwined and influenced by chance encounters with each other in a delightful story that fully engages the reader. Drawing inspiration from real events, Quinn creates a novel of characters who are wholly believable, but some of whom, do not arouse a lot of sympathy, but are fully rooted in the manner in which people acted and lifestyle of the time.

This came tantalisingly close to being a splendid novel. The characters were very well developed, the historical context finely drawn and the plot was engaging and convincing.

The story is set in London in the 1930s, against the backdrop of constitutional uncertainty as the King's relationship with Mrs Wallis Simpson became more widely known. When not stirring public outrage about the King's dalliance, the tabloid papers are full of prurient coverage of a series of murders perpetrated by a villain dubbed 'The Tiepin Killer'.

Stephen Wyley is a successful painter who has been establishing himself as a society portrait artist. He is having a secret affair with up and coming stage actress Nina Land who is currently starring in 'The Second Arrangement' at the Strand Theatre. While leaving after having enjoyed an illicit liaison in a hotel in Russell Square, Nina hears screams coming from a room on the lower floor. Her knock on the door seems to interrupt a vicious attack, and a woman manages to escape from the room and run away. Nina realises that she may have disturbed the Tiepin Killer.

Meanwhile ageing theatre critic Jimmy Erskine is living beyond his means, caught up in a cycle of decadence reminiscent of his great hero, Oscar Wilde. The vignettes of his grotesque entertainments are hilarious, though they also leave Erskine exposed to danger as he darts between the higher echelons of society down to the darkest back alleys. His secretary and majordomo is Tom Tunner, a shy epileptic who has been trying for years to disentangle himself from Erskine, although somehow, he never quite manages to escape. As the story develops Tom meets and falls in love with Madeleine Farewell, who turns out to be the victim saved by Nina Land's fortuitous intervention. Like everyone else in this novel, Madeleine has a closely-guarded a secret.

The plot moves forward very deftly, and the story is strewn with vignettes of historical people such Oswald Mosley and William Joyce (who would later become infamous as Lord HawHaw). Quinn weaves a very effective story, and has a fine ear for history.

I have clear (if not universally fond) memories of 1978. I was fifteen and living in what I now recognise was considerable opulence, in a hamlet in the close hinterland of a small provincial town in North Leicestershire. Like many teenagers, I lived in a fairly solipsistic manner, with most of what I needed fairly readily to hand, and living my life in a daze of books and progressive rock.

In Britain at large there was far less of a sense of satisfaction with life. The British economy was struggling, and the Labour government was sinking into crippling inertia. Over the four years since it had secured a parliamentary majority in the second election of 1974, the government had seen its leader resign for health reasons, and, through a series of by-election defeats, its majority had been eroded. As always in any period of economic and political strife, extremist groups had briefly flourished, and the hard right National Front, forerunners of the British National Party, held frequent rallies, which would provoke passionate counterdemonstrations from far left organisations, which inevitably descended into pitched battles in which the police generally came off worse than either faction. Meanwhile, the troubles in Northern Ireland were going through one of their most virulent phases, with bombings … or at least bomb scares … on the mainland becoming increasingly frequent. It is not surprising that such conditions should have seen the meteoric rise of punk rock, with groups like The Clash and The Sex Pistols catching and distilling the zeitgeist of youth disaffection.

Stuck in my bucolic retreat, access to punk music was limited, but I certainly loved what little I could find, and while I never went as far as sporting safety pin earrings or a Mohawk, I spent many hours imagining my self as a committed acolyte of the counterculture. Whenever I look back at those times, it is the punk rock that I recall first. This is deceptive, however – this was also the golden period of disco [I apologise - I realise I shouldn’t conjure such grim thoughts without some sort of warning for the faint of heart], and Abba were at the ghastly peak of their success,

Anthony Quinn captures that atmosphere marvellously in this novel, in which several seemingly discrete threads are effortlessly woven together into a striking tapestry. His characters are compelling: Callum Conlan is an Irish academic from Newry, who has relocated to London where he lectures at London University in early twentieth century literature; Vicky Tress is an ambitious young police constable who, as the book opens, contributes significantly to the arrest of the Notting Dale rapist who has been terrorising women in West London; Freddie Selves is Director of the National Music Hall, and lives high on the hog on his seemingly unlimited expense account: and Hannah Strode is a successful journalist with her own masthead photo above her regular column. Quinn weaves links between their very different lives, while also portraying the gloominess of the times as immediately recognisable news stories unfold in the background.

There are several intricate plotlines that are all brought together deftly, and the story is engaging and very satisfying.

London in the late 1970s is on a knife edge. Jim Callaghan is barely holding on to power with the unions striking everywhere and his rival is a woman, Margaret Thatcher. The IRA bombing campaigns on the mainland are high profile and the police are corrupt. In this maelstrom a disparate set of characters spin in and out of each others lives - the lecturer, the impresario, the policewoman, the journalist - all are part of the events.
Anthony Quinn has written a series of novels which chart modern history over the last 150 years and each offers a superb insight into time and place through engaging and complex characters. Here, it is easy to see where the plots are heading but that doesn't make them any less exciting. The role of sexism in the last seventies is writ large from Fleet Street and the Met to the humble secretary, also the fate of the Irish. It is pitch perfect writing from a true master

‘The Streets’ by Anthony Quinn is part sociology, part history, part mystery, part political discussion. Set in the 1880s, it sets a fictional tale within true history, the sort of thing hated by historians themselves who fear that readers will believe it is all true. They should credit we readers with the ability to recognize fiction from fact. This is a story encompassing poverty, pride, crime, corruption, community and, almost, eugenics.
David Wildeblood has a new job. He is an inspector, a fact-collector, charged with touring the North London borough of Somers Town, conducting interviews and collating information to be published in Henry Marchmont’s weekly news sheet ‘The Labouring Classes of London’; living conditions, work, income, religion, diet, pastimes, crime, health etc. Marchmont is based on Henry Mayhew’s ‘London Labour and the London Poor’ and Charles Booth’s ‘Life and Labour of the People of London’. At first Wildeblood is an outsider and woefully naïve, until he stumbles on costermonger Jo. Soon Wildeblood learns the argot, the alleys to avoid, and how to best submit his report to Marchmont’s loyal assistant Mr Rennert. Then he stumbles onto a scheme in which criminal landlords defraud their tenants, refuse to repair their properties then clear the streets for redevelopment leaving the inhabitants homeless. When a local man organizes a protest, he is later found drowned in the river. Wildeblood is warned by a reporter friend, Clifford Paget of ‘The Chronicle’, that his life may be in danger but he continues to investigate.
Wildeblood’s time in Somers Town is juxtaposed with his, albeit tenuous, relationship with his wealthy godfather Sir Martin Elder and Kitty, his daughter. The two stories come together as he recognizes a connection between a social charity providing poor city dwellers with a day trip to the countryside, and what is happening in Somers Town. The tentacles of property exploitation, fraud and social engineering spread around London. At times the sociology and politics of the author intruded into my head and the exposition distracted me from the story but, like all Quinn’s novels, the characters are a delight.
The description of ‘The Streets’ as a ‘thriller’ though, is misleading. This is a thoughtful considered novel. Well-researched, it feels as if this book is close to the author’s heart; perhaps too close. For me, it was a slower, worthy read, compared with his other novels and less accessible.
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‘The Rescue Man’, debut novel of Anthony Quinn, is slow moving tale of a man changed by war. Set in Liverpool throughout World War Two, it is clearly a love letter to the city by Liverpool-born Quinn. It focusses on a love triangle between a historian and two photographers.
Tom Baines is a quiet architectural historian in his late thirties. He lives in the past, researching a book about Liverpool’s buildings which he somehow never manages to finish. In 1939, his mentor recommends he research a misunderstood Liverpool architect, Peter Eames who mysteriously committed suicide leaving his work never properly recognised.
When war breaks out Baines volunteers as a rescue man, working in teams to extract people and bodies from the bombed buildings he was supposedly cataloguing for his book. This experience, and the people he works with, have a profound impact and slowly his life changes. His language coarsens, thanks to mixing with the men on his team, and in response to his publisher’s request to speed up his research of the city’s buildings before they are destroyed by bombs, he meets husband and wife photographers Richard and Bella.
The romance is a long time coming and the first half of the book seems to meander along without urgency, Tom is a quiet, academic unassuming man and I had to work at sticking with the book. I wondered what there was in him which attracted the bright flower, Bella.
Tom Baines says, ‘It was only when war came and I started doing rescue woke that I sort of... woke up.’ Unfortunately the book is a third through before we reach 1940 and the bombing of Liverpool and two-thirds through before the pace picks up. There is a sense of time being suspended until the final quarter of the book is reached and, as the brutality of the bombing clears street after Liverpool street and many of the historic buildings Baines was meant to catalogue are reduced to rubble, Tom hits crisis point.
The pace is not helped as the story of Peter Eames is told via diary extracts which are stop start with substantial gaps. The themes of wartime destruction – not only of buildings, but of trust between family, lovers and friends – are mirrored between the Eames and Baines timelines. Architect Eames builds, rescue man Baines negotiates the rubble left by the Luftwaffe’s bombing raids. And both are key players in love triangles where trust is betrayed and marriage vows broken.
This is Anthony Quinn’s debut novel and though thoughtful like his later books, it lacks their narrative pace. If you are familiar with Liverpool, which I’m not, it will be a more fulfilling read. There is no doubt about Quinn’s beautiful writing, simply that the subject – and the perhaps over-use of the Liverpool setting – did not hold me. Not his best book but well worth reading if you know his later work such as ‘Freya’.
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"Our Friends In Berlin", set in London in 1941, is a well-written atmospheric novel with a unique point of view that captures the period well and has a couple of original plot twists but which I found a little too bloodless to be satisfying.

The story focuses on three main characters: Jack Hoste, an Englishman running a network of "Fifth Columnists", English Nazi sympathisers and ex-members of the British Union of Fascists, to gather intelligence for Berlin; Marita Pardoe, wife of an interned leader of the British Fascist Union, now in hiding but still plotting against the British state and Amy Strallen a young English woman, partner in an at-the-time-innovative marriage bureau and former friend of Marita Pardo.

At the start of the novel, I found myself quite disoriented (in a good way) by the idea of a spy novel set in London during the Blitz where the German spies are the heroes. I didn't know where it was going but I enjoyed the way the ever-so-English almost "Mrs Minerva" atmosphere was made oxymoronic when applied to descriptions of "Little England" fifth columnists meeting discuss how to accelerate Hitler's liberation of Europe.

There's a strong plot here, some genuinely tense action scenes and an authentic (for an age I have no direct experience of) period feel. I rather liked the way in which Jacks' colleagues were brought to life and I loved the descriptions of the workings of the Marriage Bureau.

So why aren't I gushing with enthusiasm?

Partly it's because Jack Hoste shows so much sang-froid he eventually comes across as either emotionally crippled or so fatalistic that he's just going through the motions of living. This may be authentic but I found it hard to engage with.

I also struggled with the way the novel told Amy Strallen's story. The episodes describing her pre-war relationship with Marita were important to the plot and to character exposition but they felt dumped into the narrative, disrupting the flow rather than adding to the momentum. Focusing the final chapter on Amy felt like a last-ditch attempt for broader significance that didn't quite make it.

‘Half of the Human Race’ by Anthony Quinn is a gem of a novel, one to keep and re-read. The front cover illustration suggests it is another Great War love story, but it is so much more than that. In fact the warfare occupies only a hundred or so pages. Rather, it is a character study of England before the war, of suffragettes and cricketers, of a different time, when the demands put on love were extreme.
A new king is being crowned and the protestations of votes for women are taking a violent turn. Set against this background in 1911, we meet the key characters at a cricket match. Connie Calloway is a former medical student who now works in a bookshop after her father’s suicide left her family poorer than they expected to be. Will Maitland is a young county cricketer rubbing shoulders with the great ‘Tam’, AE Tamburlain, as popular as WG Grace. A flicker of attraction carries the pair throughout this story as both consider questions of loyalty and belief and where love fits into the mix. When the ageing Tam’s place in the M−Shire team is threatened, Will must consider whether to support his friend or risk losing his captaincy of the team. Connie, at once thrilled and intimidated as her friend Lily is imprisoned in Holloway for a suffragette demonstration, considers the strength of her belief in votes for women and how far she is prepared to go. When she meets an old school friend, she also must make a decision. The decisions they take govern the direction of their lives as times change and the country edges towards war. Will their attraction burgeon into romance and love? Connie is hardly Will’s mother’s idea of the girl he should marry. She is outspoken and independent, perhaps too much so for Will? Connie’s personality is juxtaposed with her older sister Olivia who, Connie fears, is trading her independence for a rich husband.
Quinn creates two characters of their time and beyond it, that are totally believable, with a surrounding cast of characters including the fascinating Tam, artist Denton Brigstock, cousin Louis and friend Lily. Quinn, obviously a cricket fan, writes with a light hand about the sport and this should not be off-putting for any readers who do not like cricket. It is a key part of the plot and offers a view of a gentleman’s world where codes of behavior and manners are assumed, where tradition rules; similar values are on show later in the book when Will, now Captain Maitland, is waiting for the next big push. When he confronts his commanding officer to query a battle plan, he is more like Connie than he would ever realize.
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During the summer of 1941 London is facing the height of the Blitz. The victory in the battle of Britain throughout the previous year now seems a long time ago as Nazi bombers conduct their nightly assault on the city.

Jack Hoste is leading an exhausting double life. He manages a surprisingly extensive network of Nazi sympathisers with whom he arranges clandestine meetings to collate the various morsels of potentially valuable intelligence that his contacts have gathered. He is, however, merely playing a part, being a member of the intelligence service engaged on monitoring the German fifth column within British society. While his network is large and enables him to stifle what might otherwise have been a dangerous flow of information to the enemy, he recognises that he is not engaging with the most dangerous elements of the fifth column. He has his sights on Marita Pardoe, known for years as a prominent and eloquent Nazi sympathiser, but, since the start of the war, disappeared from view. Jack and his colleagues are left with just one potential route to discover the whereabouts of Ms Pardoe, through her former friend and companion, Amy Strallen.

Quinn builds up a tense atmosphere very effectively, adeptly conveying the grimness of life in the Blitz, and the sheer sense of exhaustion and despair with which Londoners had come to view the war by that stage. There is constant danger from the nightly bombing raids which, in addition to the primary damage and loss of life they strew randomly about the city, leave everyone on edge from lack of sleep. Food is already in short supply, and the blackout imposes its own form of curfew, curtailing the citizens’ freedom to engage in even the most mundane activities such as a visit to the pub, or an evening stroll. Trust is also in diminishing supply, and Hoste’s attempts to befriend Miss Strallen do not initially end well.

This is a very entertaining and well-crafted espionage novel. The plot is intricate, and well managed, with the various threads all following impressively sinuous paths, and is notable for its immense plausibility.

Novels that have a real geographical setting but in which the author inserts his own invented locations are fascinating. Your mind pictures the exact places mentioned but then comes the imaginary street or building. Are you sure you know where you are or not? Mr Quinn uses the real life of a nineteenth century Liverpool architect and fictionalises it. The main character is an architectural historian the time is the blitz during the Second World War. Excellent if you know the city and equally good if you are a fan of the doomed love affair. The author's descriptions of life during the heavy bombing of the blitz are terrific and terrible.

To be fair, this book is suffering from my having read it so soon after Kate Atkinson's "Transcription", which covers much of the same ground. It was a quick and easy read, and I enjoyed it, although parts of it stretched credulity. Could middle class people in southern England really afford to pay for the services of a marriage bureau by 1944?

The section set in 1935, which was suddenly inserted into the wartime narrative, felt longer than necessary. Then the narrative jumped from 1941 to 1944, during which time Jack had apparently kept his deception going (how? I wanted to know why Marita had apparently been content with the status quo for all these years). Amy was described both as having forgotten all about Jack and also as still having a bit of a thing for him. Jack's character never really came to life and Amy brought things to a head at the end by behaving in a totally stupid fashion. The final chapter confused me - what was its purpose

SPOILER

(apart from Amy seeing Marita on the bus)?½

‘Our Friends in Berlin’ by Anthony Quinn tells a story of London in World War Two seldom told. It is a spy novel but not a thriller. It focuses on the individuals concerned and has a deceptive pace which means the threats, when they come, are more startling. Jack Hoste is not who he seems to be. He is not a tax inspector; he is not looking for a wife. He is a special agent who tracks down Nazi spies. And at night he is an ARP warden.
The juxtaposition of Hoste’s life of secrets is set nicely against that of Amy Strallen who works at the Quartermaine Marriage Bureau. Ordinary life does go on in London during the Luftwaffe bombing and Amy must match clients together, a matter of instinct rather than calculation. In order to be matched with the right person, clients are asked to tell the truth about what they are seeking, truths which may have been disguised or hidden until now. Client requests include ‘a lady with capital preferred’ and ‘not American’. Then one day she meets a new client who seems oddly reluctant to explain what he is looking for. The client is Jack Hoste and he doesn’t want a wife, he is searching for Marita Pardoe, a suspected Nazi sympathiser and friend of Amy in the Thirties. What unfolds is a story of spying, gentle romance, betrayal, fanaticism and the life of living in a bombed city.
Jack and Amy seem to run on parallel tracks, veering towards and then away from each other, both romantically unsure, both allow the real world to get in the way. And get in the way it does, in the shape of Marita. Quinn is excellent at building characters, he makes you care for them and that’s what keeps you reading. In a time of war, decisions are often made recklessly but Jack and Amy draw back from doing this. Both are people of honour, making the secrets they must keep and the lies they must tell all the more pertinent. The nature of truth is a theme wriggling its way through every page.
Anthony Quinn is a favourite author of mine, his novels are each quite different and I will read everything he writes. I read this one quickly.
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When Jack Hoste comes to the marriage bureau that Amy Strallen works in, he doesn't seem that eager to find a wife. however Amy keeps 'bumping into' Jack and she grows to like this mild-mannered accountant. After getting caught in a bomb raid Amy goes back to Jack's flat and discovers a collection of iron crosses. She immediately thinks Jack is a Nazi agent and reports him. But Jack is a double agent and Amy has been targeted because of her friendship with a much bigger fish.
Anthony Quinn is a superb writer of historical fiction which tells very human stories and if one approaches this book with that in mind one cannot help but admire. This book is being purported to be a rip-roaring spy thriller, that it is not. There is some violence and some intrigue but it is more about the relationships between people in the war and how emotions can be suppressed. The writing is wonderful and I felt attached to both Amy and Jack, they are likeable characters holding secrets. The plot is carefully constructed and the two violent incidents seem to come out of the blue. I have loved every book that Quinn has written and this is no exception.

‘’With night descending the yellow glare of the street lamps lent it an air at once forlorn and promisingly sleazy.’’

Anthony Quinn has always been a writer highly recommended by good friends of mine and his Freya has been on my TBR for quite some time. When I requested Eureka, I was mainly attracted by the whimsical, groovy cover and by the fact that the story is set during the late 60s,a period of time that I consider to be one of the most fascinating in History.I am glad my instinct was right because this has been a very interesting reading experience.

We follow the people involved in the making of a film called ‘’Eureka’’ which is based on a script inspired by The Figure In The Carpet, a short story by Henry James. The man responsible for the screenplay is Nat, an Oscar winner that tries to regain fame and acceptance. The novel itself isn’t action packed, it is rather a slow burner, but terribly interesting, in my opinion. Besides being allowed a glimpse in the process of filmmaking at the time, we come to live with the characters and understand them better through their choices and actions in their social, professional and private life.

The characters are rich and fully developed. Nat is eccentric -in many ways- but he is deeply sympathetic. He is charmingly vain and kind hearted and a bit naive in a childish, almost innocent way. Freya is a journalist, a modern woman full of wits, grace and charm, but with a rather complicated private life. Billie is a young aspiring actress who struggles to find her place in the acting professions and along with it, she tries to find the courage -aided by her family and Nat- to escape an abusive relationship with Jeff, who is someone I’d cut in half with a blunt chainsaw if I had the chance...Reiner is a German director with an interesting background story and Sonja is a German actress who tries to do her job as best as she could and in the same time be there for everyone. And of course, we have Vere, a legendary actor, who for some reason made me picture the great Derek Jacobi as I was reading. So you see? It is a rare case that we have such a fascinating cast of characters who are nicely introduced, fully fleshed-out and realistic without being irritating or superficial. I was really impressed on that ground.

However, in my opinion, the true attraction and asset of Quinn’s novels isn’t the story, not even the people who populate its pages, but the setting, both in terms of time and of place. I don’t think I’ve read a better description of the swinging sixties, nor one as finely inserted in the story as this. The references to the music -the Beatles being the focus, obviously- the clothes, the outrageous parties, the new cinematic techniques and movements that were just starting, forming the experimental cinematography, were vivid and I felt as if I’ve been a child of the sixties. Furthermore, the whole setting has a strong, urban feeling which I really loved and felt familiar with. I would say that the descriptions of beautiful Munich with the urban, haunting atmosphere of Maximilianstrasse during the night (and those who have been to the wonderful Bavarian city will know what I’m talking about) were some of the best I’ve ever come across in a book. Equally beautiful, though a bit more common, were the images of the autumnal London during the dusk.

So, needless to say, Quinn’s writing is very interesting. The dialogues echo the ‘’sound’’ of the times and they feel natural and flowing. The film script that had the function of the story-within-the-story was a special feature that may seem irrelevant to some, but if we bother to look into it in depth (as we ought to, because we are readers after all), we’ll understand that it serves in realising the characters’ motives and prevents the writer from becoming too descriptive and repetitive. The story itself isn't so interesting, though. I felt, at times, that it was only a background, an excuse (in apositive way) for our portagonists’unfilding of their strengths and weaknesses.

Eureka is the kind of book that becomes memorable for its cast of characters and the successful depictions of one of the most beautiful and unique eras of our times. There is danger and debauchery and frivolity and joy and death. I don’t know about you, but this is the kind of books that definitely make a lasting impression on me.

Many thanks to Random House UK and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Another excellent library selection. I wasn't sure, starting out, what type of novel this was going to be, or whether I would ever warm to Freya, but then either a shared love for Austen with the author or my fevered imagination picked out a connection with Emma and I was hooked. Like reading a twentieth century 'update' of my favourite novel, Freya became Emma Woodhouse, naturally, her friend Nancy was suddenly Harriet Smith, Robert, their shared love interest, was a horrid blend of Robert Martin and Mr Elton, and in Freya's dashing but doomed love interest Alex there was a new twist on Frank Churchill. That leaves Nat Fane as Mr Knightley (or Nancy, doubling roles), but no theory is perfect! However, an interesting line from the end of the book then seemed to confirm my interpretation: 'Though I'd prefer Emma Woodhouse or even Emma Bovary. It's funny how some characters, mere figments on the page, never really die in our heads, or hearts'.

Anyway! I did warm to Freya, who was initially too frightfully middle class ('Darling!') and 'a right good chap', or a male author's ideal woman (swears like a trooper and isn't looking to be tied down), to really appeal to me. And then I wondered if there was going to be any kind of plot, ambling from the end of the Second World War and onto the 'dreaming spires' of Oxford, before skipping ahead to London in the 50s and early 60s, but I was pleasantly surprised - and captivated - there too. After leaving university without a degree, Freya becomes a journalist, chasing interesting people and topics (like homosexuality, still considered a crime in the 50s) and constantly getting passed over in favour of her male colleagues, like the odious Robert Cosway. She also suffers various personal upheavals, including parting with 'best friend' Nancy, but her chance acquaintance with Twiggy-esque model Chrissie throws her heart and her head into conflict.

Like Emma Woodhouse, I think that Freya will stay with me for a little longer after closing the book. Quinn effortlessly captures the social more and injustices of the forties to the sixties, and his heroine leaps off the page, whether the reader is supportive or despairing of her words and deeds (I'm uncomfortably in the former camp). A worthy take on Austen's 'heroine whom no one but myself will much like', if that's what Quinn actually intended!

Summer 1967 and German director Reiner Werner Kloss is in London to shoot an updated version of a Henry James story. The production is financed by alleged gangster Harry Pulver, the lead actress is discovered after she tries to steal a wallet and screenwriter Nat has an interesting sexual peccadillo. This is the summer of Sergeant Pepper and amidst a whirl of sex and drugs and charges to society the film was never going to be a straightforward costume drama but as art and real-life collide the characters all change in one way or another.

Anthony Quinn is fast establishing himself as a stellar novelist. Yet again this book manages to be literary, emotive and entertaining and the twists of the plot echo those in the original Henry James novella. This is a supremely engaging book which offers much social commentary on society in the 1960s, and in that as well it echoes the writing of James. It would be too easy to think of this book as a story about a film being made in Swinging London, it is so much more.

David Wildeblood is the disgraced son of a middle class family who has been employed as a researcher/journalist looking at the slums of Somers Town in London. He makes both friends and enemies amongst the people he meets in the course of the working day. David also comes into the social circle of his Godfather, a rich and important man of business with some connection to Somers Town. David uncovers a social experiment which will remove the poor from the streets and also enrich the developers who want to realise the potential of the area. This leads him into danger.

It took me a while to get into this book but once I'd got through the first third I became completely hooked. The slum life of North London in the 1880s is carefully realised and there are some well-drawn characters. David is a bit of an insipid hero at first, the innocent abroad and easily duped. However by the end of the book the compromise conclusion makes complete sense.

As a social history this is a little light, as an exciting thriller it is a little weak, as a combination of the two it works very well and therefore is an enjoyable read.

The 1930s come alive in this novel by journalist Anthony Quinn, I stepped into his world and felt as if I was there. An effortless read, I was plunged into the worlds of Stephen Wyley, artist; Nina Land, actress; the gloriously-named Madeline Farewell, hostess; Jimmy Erskine, theatre critic; and Tom Tunner, Erskine’s assistant.
The setting is a time of looming war, royal crisis, blackshirts and strict homosexuality laws. It is not an easy novel to categorize: there are murders, but it is not a detective novel; we see the world of art and theatre and prostitution, but it is not a novel about art etc. Packed with period detail, with not one detail too many, this is written with a light hand and a clever plot. It starts with a romantic assignation and chance encounter in a hotel with a murderer, known in the newspapers as the Tiepin Killer. This meeting of only seconds, brings together the key characters and kickstarts the murder plotline.
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This begins as if it's going to be a murder mystery/crime thriller but, as the story continues, the tiepin murderer fades into the background only reappearing at the end for a very underwhelming climax. However, the more enjoyable parts of this novel are the 1930s setting (Mosleys' blackshirts on the march, the impending abdication) and the louche theatrical and artistic background. Most of the characters verge on the stereotypical but are portrayed in enough detail to remain interesting and mostly engaging. The risky, then illegal, world of the homosexual is another strong element in the novel.

When I finished reading ‘Freya’ I wanted to shout out to everyone around me to read it. Why? It is a story of friendship and love, truth and honesty, loyalty and betrayal. Anthony Quinn captures Freya immaculately – he seems to intuit so much women’s stuff so well – so much better than other male novelists recently writing from a female point of view. It is such a refreshing read, I hope it sells loads and wins loads. It deserves it. If you can, read it next.
‘Freya’ is the story of Freya Wyley from VE Day to the 1960s via Oxford, Nuremberg, Italy and mostly London. Recently demobbed from the Wrens, at which she achieved a senior position as bomb plotter in a world with few men, she goes up to Oxford unsure if she is too ‘old’ at the age of 21 to return to study. There she finds that pre-war expectations of women re-apply again and with her customary cussedness she fights against it. With the glimmer of an opportunity, she sets out to get a break as a journalist by interviewing a reclusive war reporter who will be attending the Nuremberg war trials. She calls in a favour from her father, lies, manipulates and bravely goes forth, setting foot into the ruins of the bombed city where she is later told she should not have ventured. But that is Freya: undaunted. She is strong, true, speaks without thinking and gets into trouble because of it. Of course it is the few times in which she is not honest, either with herself or with her best friend Nancy – who she met on the night of VE day when they got ‘stinko’ together – that make the most fascinating reading.
It is a joy to read a female character who is not nice all the time, who feels real, and who I can identify with more than some sugar-sweet modern protagonists. This book fairly fizzes along, read in two days on holiday, I found myself irritated when my Kindle’s battery died because I ignored the ‘battery low’ warning.
Quinn’s sense of time is perfect, he moves seamlessly from wartime to the Sixties. All his characters have depth, flaws and are believable, and his balance of action, contemplation and setting is exact. He covers a wide variety of subjects of the time - morality and art, homosexuality offences, celebrity, political rigour - by simply allowing Freya to investigate and report. The technique of covering Freya’s investigation of an article, followed by the published article, acts as a semi-colon before the next segment of her life.
‘Freya’ is Quinn’s fifth novel. Next, I will read ‘Curtain Call’, his fourth; and I won’t wait long.
Read more of my book reviews at http://www.sandradanby.com/book-reviews-a-z/

I have admired Quinn's writing for many years. The Rescue Man, Half the Human Race et al were all in their differing ways, excellent. Freya however takes the top prize and it deserves to win some. The Britain it presents is in many ways long vanished . In others the bigotry and discrimination as well as political corruption is still with us albeit not as obvious. The writing is top notch. We can look at the characters with a wry smile and the benefit of hindsight or do what Quinn enables us to do and be sucked into the times he so ably describes, not really wanting to leave them at the end. Highly recommended and surely one of THE books of 2016 . More please, much, much more......

A light crime romp with some nice historical detail thrown in. But it stretched credibility too far - there seem to only be about 6 people living in 1930s London. Overall the author uses too many coincidences to move the plot forward, making it a less satisfying read.½

This came tantalisingly close to being a splendid novel. The characters were very well developed, the historical context finely drawn and the plot was engaging and convincing . .. until the final denouement.

The story is set in London in the 1930s, against the backdrop of constitutional uncertainty as the King's relationship with Mrs Wallis Simpson became more widely known. When not stirring public outrage about the King's dalliance, the tabloid papers are full of prurient coverage of a series of murders perpetrated by a villain dubbed 'The Tiepin Killer'.

Stephen Wyley is a successful painter who has been establishing himself as a society portrait artist. He is having a secret affair with up and coming stage actress Nina Land who is currently starring in 'The Second Arrangement' at the Strand Theatre. While leaving after having enjoyed an illicit liaison in a hotel in Russell Square, Nina hears screams coming from a room on the lower floor. Her knock on the door seems to interrupt a vicious attack, and a woman manages to escape from the room and run away. Nina realises that she may have disturbed the Tiepin Killer.

Meanwhile ageing theatre critic Jimmy Erskine is living beyond his means, caught up in a cycle of decadence reminiscent of his great hero, Oscar Wilde. The vignettes of his grotesque entertainments are hilarious, though they also leave Erskine exposed to danger as he darts between the higher echelons of society down to the darkest back alleys. His secretary and majordomo is Tom Tunner, a shy epileptic who has been trying for years to disentangle himself from Erskine, though somehow he never quite manages to escape. As the story develops Tom meets and falls in love with Madeleine Farewell, who turns out to be the victim saved by Nina Land's fortuitous intervention. Madeleine is a woman with a secret.

The plot moves forward very deftly, and the story is strewn with vignettes of historical people such Oswald Mosley and William Joyce (who later became infamous as Lord HawHaw). I was captivated until the last thirty or forty pages, at which point I felt that it descended into a facile simulacrum of a mystery novel. I found the conclusion very disappointing, and wondered whether it was hurled together at a great rate in order to meet a publisher's fast-looming deadline.

Curtain Call – A Stylish Crime Romp.

Anthony Quinn’s Curtain Call is a stylish crime romp set in the decadent but politically intriguing year of 1936. This is one of the most delightful crime reads in a long time even though set in the 1930s it is not a pastiche of that era’s crime stories. There is a fantastic eye for the details that others forget in historical facts, laws and language all of which is rich makes for a carefully crafted suspense which places Curtain Call in a class of its own. Quinn has written a compelling story with a cast of characters whose separate stories are eventually linked together. It is very clear that at some point or points throughout the story we will meet the Tie –Pin Killer but not actually know he is until the reveal.

The actress Nina Land is having an assignation with her friend society portrait artist and married man Stephen Wyley at the Imperial Hotel when she interrupts an attempted murder in one of the rooms and the girl runs away. Soon Nina released that she had interrupted the Tie-Pin Killer and that she would need to go to the police with a description to stop him killing more women. She gets Wyley to sketch the

Jimmy Erskine is an experienced theatre critic of many years standing writing for The Chronicle, who consistently puts his livelihood by taking risks meeting young men in dangerous places in the darker areas of London nightlife. Erskine’s life is managed and edited by Tom his secretary whose accidental meeting with Madeleine Farewell is who ties the storyline together. Madeleine also happens to be the woman who was being attacked at The Imperial Hotel, when Nina Land interrupted the Tie-Pin Killer.

The way in which Quinn writes draws the reader in to the story and in turn makes us care for the characters and what eventually happens to them. The story and characters set firmly in the tumultuous world of Soho and theatre land when London was at its hedonistic nadir, when being gay meant happy and being queer meant arrest. Home grown fascism was at its rampant best and again examples are in the story reflecting the terror they had brought to the streets of London. Also the big event of the year the eventual abdication of King Edward for the love of a woman, the book ends on a positive with the Coronation of King George VI.

Curtain Call is stylish well written even when reverting to the language of 1930s English the prose is crystal clear the storylines are neat and the characters are well developed. As you read through you will appreciate the incisive wit, the attention to the language of the period and more importantly the aesthetics of the period. This book is nothing but a pleasure to read that I cannot recommend highly enough.

If I was ever tempted to see the suffragette movement as a small group of women who chained themselves to railings and immediately forced the government to capitulate to their demands, I’m not tempted to do so after reading this. It brings to life the injustices suffered by women at that time, the scale of the struggle, and the contempt with which suffragists were held at the time – even by other women. It conveys the sense of frustration felt by the oppressed in the face of the complacent I’m-alright-Jack attitude of those who are not. For a white male author (not traditionally a disadvantaged demographic) to have brought this to life made it even more of a triumph in my eyes.½