His real passions were esoteric, as a little interest to the common man or his colleagues in Bow Street, certainly not to his wife—the Berlin Treaty between Germany and the Soviets (how could that end well?) or a demonstration of a ’televisor’ to the Royal Society by a chap called Baird (like something from a H. G. Wells novel). He had an enquiring mind. It was a curse. Even sometimes for a detective”. A] riveting re-creation of life in 1920s London…Atkinson’s palpable fondness for her characters helps her to imbue even themost minor of them with texture and depth, and she brings the same attention to detail to her portrait of the highs and lows of Jazz Age London. Another triumph from one of our finest novelists.”

Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson | Waterstones

Maddox (promoted to inspector after the war), was in collision with Nellie Coker, He protected her from the law, but wasn’t sure what else he benefited from. Atkinson is a thoughtful writer with an astute understanding of 20th-century social history. This is the perfect novel for uncertain times, when comfort of a particularly English and nostalgic stripe is required.’ – The Times I love Kate Atkinson. I have listened or read most of her books and she is a favorite. Yet of all her books this is my least favorite. I did get the audio from my library quite soon after its release and was anxious to enjoy it. So I started it right away and boy was it slow going. I never could engage with the characters or get really interested in the underlying mystery to be solved.The ending is a little anti-climactic after such a wonderful set up however this was not something that overly bothered me. We also get a final section on what happened to the characters afterwards, something I always appreciate.

Shrines of Gaiety: A Novel: Atkinson, Kate: 9780593466322 Shrines of Gaiety: A Novel: Atkinson, Kate: 9780593466322

Combines the colour of a historical drama with the pace of a thriller and the detail of a police procedural... masterful. i NEWS Simply one of the best writers working today, anywhere in the world…[ Shrines of Gaiety] is set during Jazz Age London, in all its fizzy madness and desperation for the new, the better, the hustle. Atkinson simply has a magician’s ability to switch a readers’s moods within a few paragraphs, and as dark as her stories can get, within them always shines a beacon of humanity.”The delinquent Coker empire was a house of cards that Frobisher aimed to topple. The filthy, glittering underbelly of London was concentrated in its nightclubs, and particularly the Amethyst, the gaudy jewel at the heart of Soho's nightlife. It was not the moral delinquency - the dancing, the drinking, not even the drugs - that dismayed Frobisher. It was the girls. Girls were disappearing in London. At least five he knew about had vanished over the last few weeks. Where did they go? He suspected that they went in through the doors of the Soho clubs and never came out again.