review of "the London Novels of Colin MacInnes"

review of

"the London Novels of Colin MacInnes"

by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

2314. "review of the London Novels of Colin MacInnes"

- complete version

- credited to tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE -

- uploaded to my Critic website March 10, 2025

- http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticMacInnes.html

review of

"the London Novels of Colin MacInnes"

by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 10, 2025

The complete review is here:

http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticMacInnes.html

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7208410605

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/211313782-london-novels-of-colin-macinnes-the

Reviews that're too long to post on Goodreads go, eventually, to my "Critic" website: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Critic.html . Alas, I'm getting slower & slower to create the relevant webpage - largely b/c I just don't enjoy it. Still, if you wait for a wk or 2 after this truncated review is posted & if you then go to the Critic link & search for The London Novels of Colin MacInnes you might find a review about 3 times as long as this.

This bk caught my attn when it was on a moving bk cart in front of one of my favorite used bkstores in PGH. I can't really give a good reason why I was interested. "London novels" by an author I've never heard of. I'm certainly NOT an expert on Brit Lit so it's no wonder the author's not familiar. I've been to London in 1978, 1984, 1988, & 1994 so maybe I just wanted to visit it from the perspective of someone who, presumably, lived there. Anyway, I anticipated liking it &, indeed, I did. I found the author unique, slightly close to Anthony Burgess (but earlier) but not so close as to seem too close. I liked the way he handled his subjects & I liked his writing style. The downside was that the bk was poorly bound & was, therefore, falling apart while I was reading it. I had to stop all-too-frequently to tape pages together (messy).

There's an Introduction from Nat Hentoff, someone I associate w/ jazz criticism.

"I was thinking of Colim MacInnes very early one winter morning during a demonstration against the American way of bringing peace to Vietnam. Having briefly shuffled along in a picket line in front of an induction center in lower Manhattan, I was now on the periphery of both police and demonstrators as I moved to see how another deployment of our forces, so to speak, had fared behind the center. An elderly lady, suspecting quite correctly that I, being bearded, was one of them, paused at the entrance to a chapel to inform me and my companions that we were 'Scum!' Some months before, in an allegorical novel, I had described such a demonstration and indeed had written about an elderly lady who had assured the protagonist and his companions that they were 'Scum!' Bowing to the real lady, I felt somewhat regretful that fiction had so specifically turned into fact-a further augury that when published the book would be categorized as a sociological or documentary or journalist's novel.

"It was then that Colin MacInnes came to mind because such terms have been applied by many to these London novels of his. Whether in praise or as reservation, they have been applied far too casually and with only partial accuracy. He intended more, and achieved more. Or so it seems to me, particularly as I feel a degree of identification with MacInnes, both with regard to our bifurcated vocations and also because neither of us takes kindly to being fitted into little boxes." - p vii

For me, that's an auspicious beginning for multiple reasons that resonate w/ me. For one, I was against the Vietnam War. For a 2nd, I've been insulted by strangers fairly often. For a 3rd, Hentoff's "elderly lady" who's "paused at the entrance to a chapel" reminds me of the religious environment I grew up in. Everyone around me was a Christian, they also all seemed to be uniformly hypocritical. "Thous Shalt Not Kill" never seemed to interfere w/ their bloodthirstiness. Such a climate still prevails insofar as even anarchists, these days, are largely sweetly oblivious to the conflict between being hypothetically "against rule-by" as they endorse enforced mask-wearing & proof-of-vaccination for entry into venues - going a step beyond the state in their oppressiveness. Furthermore, I, too, am against "being fitted into little boxes." In other words, Hentoff's attitude neatly resonates w/ my own &, hence, I expect much the same from MacInnes.

"But another reason for the frequency of outsiders in his fiction is a moral concern. Most who are not outsiders acquire considerable skills in what the American social critic Joseph Lyford calls auto-anesthesia-the ability to exclude from all but the most surface levels of consciousness those who are not like themselves. 'In the popular phrase," MacInnes writes in English, Half English, 'they just "don't want to know."" - p x

"'Yours is a wide assignment, limitless almost as the sea. You must be their unpaid lawyer, estate agent, wet-nurse and, in a word, their bloody guardian angel.'"

[..]

"He had now closed his eyes; and stood at the door, a Whitehall Machiavelli.

"'Some might say,' he told me softly, 'that your duty is to help them to corrupt our country.'

"Up went my brows.

"'So some might say . . . their irruption among us has not been an unmixed blessing. Thousands, you see, have come here in the last few years from Africa and the Caribbean, and given us what we never had before-a colour problem.'

"His eyes opened slowly in a slit. 'Could it not be,' I said, 'that we have given them just that in their own countries?'

"'My dear Pew! Could it be that I positively find myself in the presence of a liberal?'" - p 10

A "liberal"! I suppose 'liberals' are still associated w/ anti-racist justice & maybe there's even some truth to it.. but, for me, 'liberal' has come to mean well-to-do people who self-exalt & self-justify w/ a PR version of anti-racism & justice that rarely manifests w/ much substance when it comes down to the nitty-gritty.

In general, I like MacInnes's writing, esp his use of slang & details like the following:

"Namely, leaving my luggages at the Government hostel, to go straight out by taxi (oh, so slow, compared with our sleek Lagos limousines!) to the famous central Piccadilly tube station where I took a one-stop ticket, went down on the escalator, and then ran up the same steps in the wrong direction. It was quite easy to reach the top, and our elder brother Christmas was wrong to warn it would be impossible to me." - p 13

If you've never done this, you've never lived.

This civil servant encounters his 1st African immigrant at his job:

""You're a Jumble, man.'

"'I?'

"'Yes. That's what we call you. You don't mind?'

"'I hope I don't. . . . It's not, I trust, an impolite expression?'

"'You mean like nigger?'

"I rose up.

"'Now, please! This is the Colonial Department Welfare Office. That word is absolutely forbidden within these walls.'

"'It should be outside them, too.'

"'No doubt, I too deplore its use.'

"'Well, relax, please, Mr. Pew. And don't be so scared of Jumble. It's cheeky, perhaps, but not so very insulting.'

"'May I inquire how it is spelt?'

"'J-o-h-n-b-u-l-l.'

"'Ah! But pronounced as you pronounce it?'

"'Yes. Jumble.'" - p 18

John Bull is a personifcation of the UK, perhaps like Uncle Sam is for the US. Johnny Fortune, Mr. Pew's African immigrant client, has a half-brother who he undertakes to visit.

"'Arthur, you see . . .' (she looked modest as she spoke, though I wasn't sure if it was felt or acted) ' . . . Arthur was Mum's mistake before she met our Dad.'

"'And Arthur: where is he?'

"'In jail.'

"'Ah!'

"'He's always in and out of jail.'" - p 23

I found this following depiction of Trinidadian prejudice against Africans interesting. Whether it was accurate at the time of the writing of this (1950s) in London is unknown to me.

"'I'm looking,' I told him, 'for Mr J. M. Fortune.'

"'Oh, that little jungle cannibal. That bongo-banging Bushman.'

"'I take it,' I said, accepting some rum in a discoloured tooth-glass, 'that you yourself are not from Africa?'

"'Please be to God, no, man. I'm a civilized respectable Trinidadian.'

"'The Africans, then, aren't civilized?'

"'They have their own tribal customs, mister, but it was because of their primitive barbarity that our ancestors fled from that country some centuries ago.'" - p 37

Likewise to the above regarding Bushmen vs Gambians.

"'Do other boys here have things to sell?'

"'Oh, misters! Here is him big Londons Spadiss markik place! Better than Oxford Stereek hisself!' And he roared out laughing loud, doubling himself up and slapping himself all over. Then he looked coyly discreet. 'Those bad boys,' he said, 'they relieves you of somesink?'

"'Yes. You saw? They stole my lighter.'

"'A Ronsons?'

"'Yes.'

"'Of course. Was Mr Ronson Lighter who took it. That is his professins: when he sees Ronson lighter, he muss steal him.'

"'And who are his friends?'

"'The Billy Whispers people. Gambian boys, real bad.[']" - p 46

I don't know if this is a realistic depection of a dialect or not. If it isn't, I still like it as a writing style.

Johnny reunites w/ an old friend from Africa named Hamilton who's also an immigrant to Britain:

"'I came here, Johnny, on a merchant ship.'

"'As passenger? As crew?'

"'As stowaway. Then one month in their English jail, and I'm a free British citizen again.'

"'And how to you live on what?'

"'Ah, now, that . . .' He smiled and wobbled. 'Well, man, I hustle[']" - p 50

"'Johnny,' said Hamilton in our speech again. 'You got weed on you? If yes, do slip it in that white man's pocket while he doesn't look.'

"'No, he's my friend, I think. But I'll take care. Don't you worry, Hamilton, for me.'" - pp 55-56

In other words, Johnny is loyal to Pew b/c they've gotten to know & like each other. MacInnes's portrayal of racism, a central subject of the novel, is subtle & not too reductionist.

Indeed, when there's a raid & Johnny's carrying he turns out to be a quick thinker.

"I handed Johnny the box I'd bought to replace my lighter. As he took it, the officer grabbed it from him and opened it eagerly, scrabbling among the matches. When he did this, I saw Johnny quickly put his hand up to his mouth and swallow." - p 58

Of course, swallowing drugs is only 'safe' in small doses. I have one friend who swallowed entirely too many quaaludes & had to have his stomach pumped to prevent himself from ODing. He avoided a drug trafficking charge but barely escaped dying. Another friend, swalowed a large dose of LSD to avoid a very serious long sentence but he flipped out in jail & permanently harmed himself, it was tragic.

I've never thought that there' a language called "African" but, nonetheless, I found the following educational. Undoutedly, the number of Nigerian languages has dramatically diminished since this bk was written.

"'Johnny,' I said. 'You talk to Hamilton in African. But to others you talk in English. Why?'

"'I do not speak with Hamilton in African. I speak to him in the language of our tribe. There is no "African", but many, many tribal languages.'

"'How many?'

"'More than one hundred in Nigeria.[']" - p 61

The novel introduces me to what a "tapper" is:

"'Give me some sustenance.' And he began patting me on the back-gently at first, then harder

"'Go away,' I said, half rising.

"'Ignore him, please,' said Johnny. 'He will shoot off in time.'

"But sure enough, the tapper slowly stopped his patting, sat huddled a while in silence in his chair, then shambled to another table.

"'It is useless,' said Johnny, 'to instruct a tapper. If you resist, he will create some foolish disturbance. If you play cool, he will lose interest of his profit, and fade away.'" - p 63

Family love:

"Mr Bo looked at her through veiled eyes, ironically. 'Others,' he said, come here to flee their families' great love. A family in Africa, you see, is not like here. Our whole life and business belong to every second cousin. A family only loves you and gives you some peace when you let it eat you.' Mr Bo chuckled warmly, and flung up his hands. 'Some boys are here who wish to escape those circumstances. Here you can live out your own life, even if it is miserably.'" - p 78

My own experience is that 'families' (mine, at least) are none-too-supportive of individualists - unless we enable their parasitic existence.

The reader comes to "FIRST INTERLUDE Idyll of miscegenation on the river" (p 97).

In other words, sex between different races or ethnicities (esp if one of them is white). Not usually a friendly term but certainly one pertinent to the mentality of the 1950s in the US or the UK.

"'Our blood's the same colour, Muriel, is all that matters. Everything that comes out of every all human body is the same colour-did you think of that?'

"She did: 'Johnny, don't be disgusting.'" - p 102

"'I'd do anything for you,' she said.

"'Anything. Big words.'

"'If you want to stay with me, you can. If you wanted to get married ever, you just say. If you want a child, I'll give you one-a boy: we'll call it Johnny-number-two. I'd work for you, Johnny-any work, I'd go to jail for you-do anything.'

"'Muriel! Muriel! What sad thoughts you speak of.'" - p 106

Pew gets fired & becomes a free-lance:

"'I'm not surprised the coloured race hates us.'

"He wasn't a bit disconcerted.

"'But they don't, Pew, that's where you make your second big mistake. They don't like us, certainly, but they don't hate us. They just accept us as, I suppose, a necessary evil.'

"Determined to have the last word, I said: 'Nothing could be worse than to be neither loved nor hated. It puts one on a level with the Swiss.'" - p 109

Now I don't know if there's any realism whatsover to "It puts one on a level with the Swiss" but it's the kind of touch to this novel that endears it to me.

Johnny sows his seed:

"'This child of hers she says is one day to be yours. You believe her story, Johnny?'

"'How can I tell? It could be so. . . .'

"'You will let her have it, Johnny?'

"'Hamilton! I am no infant murderer.'

"Hamilton stretched his long body out.

"'Perhaps not,' he said. 'But if she has it, and you refuse her marriage, as I expect you to, she can then weep before the magistrate until he grants her an affiliation order. This will oblige you to support her until the infant is sixteen years of age.'

"'Man, I shall skip the country if that happens.'" - p 113

"At which this foolish man spat on the floor.

"I ought not to have said what I did, of course, but nor ought he to spit-is an unhealthy habit. So I slapped him on his face, and a fight began, and I was seized on by eight people and thrown out through the doors. Stupid behavior, with my pockets stuffed with weed, but poverty and misery cause you to act desperately, as all know." - p 126

Poverty & misery are causing me to fight desperately against writing this review.

"The price Miss Theodora made me pay for that twenty pounds she gave me at the radio corporation building was quite heavy: it was to take me that selfsame evening to a theater, and show me a play by a French man about nothing I could get my brain to climb around. At a coffee, in the interval (for this theater had no liquor in its sad bar), I said, "Miss Theodora, I know this kind of enertainment is suitable for my improvement, but don't you think we could now step out into the air?'" - p 137

Alas, Johnny gets arrested & treated in a not-exactly friendly way.

"I know the great danger of hitting back against the Law, so sat still with my hands clenched by my side. This beating went on. 'Don't bruise him,' said Mr Purity. The Constable stopped and rubbed his hands.

"'Our bruises do not show in court so well as white man's do,' I said. 'This the reason why you always hit us harder.'" - p 184

"Mr Zuss-Amor told Montgomery, 'but why don't you tell him to plead guilty and settle before the magistrate? Believe me, if they don't get him for something, they'll never let him alone. And it'll only be a fine.'

"It was, but no one had any money, and Johnny went to prison for a month." - p 229

& hence ends "City of Spades", the 1st of the 3 London novels I finished that on July 22, 2024, after oh-so-many-mnths of slow going. I can't really explain that, I liked the writing - maybe I just can't read straight novels anymore. The again, the pages falling out didn't help much.

**********

Next up is "Absolute Beginners" (1959). I may've enjoyed this one the most since its somewhat exaggerated depiction of teenagers made it more fanciful than the others. This is also the one that reminded me of Anthony Burgess's "A Clockwork Orange" (1962) w/o being quite so 'extreme'. I wonder if Burgess had read MacInnes?

"It was with the advent of the Laudie London era that I realized the whole teenage epic was tottering to doom.

"'Fourteen years old, that absolute beginner,' I said to the Wizard as we passed casually in the gramophone section to hear Little Laurie in that golden disc performance of his.

"'From now on,' said Wizard, 'he's certainly Got The Whole World In His Hands.'

"We listened to the wonder boy's nostrils spinning on.

"'They buy us younger every year,' I cried. 'Why, Little Mr L.'s voice hasn't even dropped yet, so who will those tax-payers try to kidnap next?

"'Sucklings,' said Wizard." - p 257

Note that in the very 1st sentence there's a typo: "Laudie" instead of "Laurie". That, coupled w/ the bk's continuing to fall apart even as I try to write this review, led to my projectile shitting out the window of a bus going 100mph out-of-control. ALSO, I don't know about you, but I'd buy a recording of a babe singing while suckling at their mama's teat if they cd carry a tune the way a bird carries a suitcase.

"[']The net result? "Teenager"'s became a dirty word or, at any rate, a square one.'

"I smile at Mr W. 'Well, take it easy, son,' I said, 'because a sixteen year old sperm like you has got a lot of teenage living still to do. As for me, eighteen summers, rising nineteen, I'll very soon be out there among the oldies.'" - p 258

"'This summer can't last,' said the yobbo behind the Gaggia, mopping his sweaty brow with his sweaty arm.

"'Oh yes it can, daddy-o,' I answered. 'It can last until the calendar says stop.'

"'No . . .' said the yobbo, gazing meanly up at the black-blue of that succulent June sky.

"'It can shine on forever,' I hissed at him, leaning across and mingling with the steam out of his Gaggia." - p 265

That gives you a little taste of what the dialog's like.

"'Hello, Blitz Baby,' she said.

"Which is what she calls me, because she had me in one, in a tube shelter with an air raid warden acting as midwife, as she never tires of telling me or, worse still, other people in my presence.

"'Hello, Ma,' I said to her." - p 276

There's much about teen fashion in this story, I don't know how much is based on London in this era & how much is fanciful exaggeration - it seems to me to be mostly the latter but maybe I'm wrong.

"'Those clothes you wear,' he said at last, 'disgust me.'

"And I hope they did! I had on precisely my full teenage drag that would enrage him-the grey pointed alligator casuals, the pink neon pair of ankle-crepe nylon-stretch, my Cambridge blue glove-fit jeans, a vertical-striped happy shirt revealing my lucky neck-charm on its chain, and the Roman-cut short-arse jacket just referred to . . . not to mention my wrist identity jewel, and my Spartan warrior hair-do, which everyone thinks costs me 17/6d. in Gerrard Street, Soho, but which I, as a matter of fact, do myself with a pair of nail-scissors and a three-sided mirror that Suzette's got" - p 278

A depiction of a Teddy Boy:

"'You heard, Ed. You've been expelled from the Ted college?'

"'Naher! Me? Espel me? Wot? Lissen! Me, Ar lef them, see? You fink I'm sof, or sumfink?'" - p 289

This particular teen protagonist is a photographer & a jazz buff.

"But the great thing about the jazz world, and all the kids that enter into it, is that no one, not a soul, cares what your class is, or what your race is, or what your income, or if you're boy, or girl, or bent, or versatile, or what you are-as long as you dig the scene and can behave yourself, and have left all that crap behind you, too, when you come in the jazz club door." - p 307

Sounds like paradise, eh?

"'Hail, squire,' I said. 'Long time no see. How is you are we? Won't you say tell?'" - p 310

One thing that interests me is that the main character is actually fairly reasonable, except, perhaps, in his love obsession, & has a large variety of friends that might not be friends b/c of their differences once they get older. There's an implied tolerance for, & interest in, others - & an acceptance of plurality - just as in the description of the jazz club.

"Behind the counter was a female case who didn't like the appearance of the Dean, and went into that routine that shopkeepers have perfected in the kingdom, that is, to get on the busy thing and bustle about with very necessary tasks, and when you cough or something, look up as if you'd broken into their private bedroom. And when they speak, they use a new kind of 'politeness' that's very common in our city, i.e., to say kind and courteous words, with a bitchy edge of nastiness, so they disarm you as they beat you down. To open the thing, of course, she asked us, 'Can I help you?'" - p 313

Ha ha! How nice it is to read a description of something that I've been subjected to many, MANY times. If I were to describe this to someone & they had no idea what I was talking about then I'd know that the Police State exists to protect that person & that they'll never be treated rudely by the ignorant bourgeoisie. One time I was reporting for a job I'd been hired for & I appeared carrying the relevant tools. It was at a gallery & the gallery director didn't know me & sd: "Can I help you?" - meaning: 'What is working class scum like you doing setting foot in my high-brow gallery?' I replied, with a straight face: 'Yes, you can help me carry these tools.' Strangely, she didn't actually even move to help me after all - one might even suspect that her offer was insincere! My profession was to build, install, maintain, & deinstall exhibits & I was good at it. Nonetheless, this snob terminated my employment fairly quickly after she'd taken on FIVE work-study students to take my place who stood around & socialized, getting, maybe, 1/5th of the work done that I wd have in their place.

"One thing you learn about the law is that they don't like running because their helmets usually fall off. What's more, they don't like any kind of physical effort-in fact, the one thing coppers all have in common, apart from being tramps, is that they have a horror of physical labour of any kind, particularly manual." - 341

The helmet thing interests me - it's like when you see the guard in front of the British royal palace & you see how stiff they are & how big their helmet is. It's hard to imagine how they can go into action, even tho I'm sure they can. Everything about their costume & their posture seems painfully restrictive. I wonder if they hope that an emergency situation develops so that they can get out of that stiff, front-facing pose & shoot people to get revenge on them for the torture they're subjected to.

"'And the Nebraska kid,' I said. 'Will he be viewing? Or is he around here somewhere?'

"The Hoplite gripped my arm. 'Oh, no!' he cried. 'Didn't I tell you, sweetie? It's all over between him and me!'

"'Yes? Is it? My heavens?'

"'Over and done with!' cried the Fabulous with great emphasis. 'From the moment I saw him in a hat.'" - p 388

MacInnes is great at slipping in a little sly & wry superficiality.

**********

On to the last novel, "Mr Love and Justice" (1960). I didn't take many notes regarding this one - I wasn't exactly bored but I was whizzing thru it to get to the end & finally be able to move on. The 1st paragraph:

"Frankie Love came from the sea, and was greatly ill at ease elsewhere. When on land he was harassed and didn't fit in at all. The orders he accepted without question, though a hundred grumbles, from almost any seaman, were hateful to him in a landsman's mouth. There was a deep injustice, somewhere in all this. Landsmen, in England, depend entirely on the sea, yet seamen, who sustain them, don't regulate the landsmen's lives and have to submit, when landlocked themselves for a moment, to all the landsman's meaningless caprices." - p 455

Mr Justice is an undercover cop:

"He was telling her of his first weeks in the vice game: and these weeks had not been without their tribulations. In the first place, Edward had suffered the humiliation of being himself reported as a suspect by a colleague unaware (or was he?) of his real identity as a plain-clothes man. Perhaps this mishap was due to the extraordinary difficulty he found in loitering successfully, unobserved." - p 466

My interest usually perks up when Cockney Rhyming Slang appears:

"'But, sir,' said Edward full of contrition, 'brothels <i>are</i> often raided, aren't they? Brothel-keeping cases do come up . . .'

"'Naturally, boy! But do use your loaf![']" - p 503

"loaf" = loaf of bread, "bread" rhymes w/ "head" - hence, "loaf" = "head".

"'Sir: it's just a question, sir, of procedure. This hitting them. I know the rule is you never do. But could you tell me please, sir, when you can do?'

"A cracked smile appeared on the Detective-sergeant's life-battered countenance.

"'Well, son,' he said, 'number one, in public, never. The citizens don't like it. Also, they don't believe we <i>do</i> it. Of course, if you're quite obviously attacked it's another matter.'" - p 505

I'm happy to say I've never been beaten by the police. I do have one friend who was taken into an alley & beaten repeatedly over a specific spot on his stomach to cause permanent internal organ damage - thusly shortening his life. I have another friend who was hog-tied & beaten on his feet b/c that doesn't show the damage. At the time, in the 1980s, Amnesty International wdn't accept that as a torture case b/c they sd the US doesn't torture. I believe it's now considered torture by them. I HAVE, however, been abused & threatened by police who just didn't like my looks b/c I'm a non-conformist.

"For the true copper's dominant characteristic, if the truth be known, is neither those daring or vicious qualities that are sometimes attributed to him by friend or enemy, but an ingrained conservatism, an almost desperate love of the conventional. It is untidiness, disorder, the unusual, that a copper disapproves of most of all: far more, even, than of crime, which is merely a professional manner. Hence his profound dislike of people loitering in the streets, dressing extravagantly, speaking with exotic accents, being strange, weak, eccentric or simply any rare minority-of their doing, in short, anything that cannot be safely predicted." - p 519

& I'm a High Unpredictable in the Church of the SubGenius.

"the road life of Wentworth street-almost unknown elsewhere in London where roads are considered means by which you move from place to place, not places in themselves-bubbles, overspills and sways in argument and shrill persuasion, to the off-stage squawks of thousands of slaughtered chickens. Old Montague street with its doorless shops that opened outward in the narrow thoroughfare, and its discreet, secretive synagogues, has still the flavour of a semi-voluntary ghetto." - p 534

I imagine every city has areas that only certain types of people go into that are full of an interesting character worth checking out if one can survive it.

One of the main things I learned from this novel is that a "ponce" is a pimp & that ponces are often chosen by the sources of their income rather than vice-versa. I must've always thought that "ponce" = "poofter" & thought that it, therefore, meant homosexual.

"'Anyway,' said Frankie, 'they're the only profession, the coppers, who've never had a hero-ever thought of that? They've put up statues to Nell Gwynnes and Lady Godiva, but never so far as I know to a copper.'

"'There may perhaps,' said the Madam, eyeing him acidly, 'be yet another male profession that's not commemorated by a statue.'

"Frankie laughed so generous a laugh that it put everyone at ease again. 'Oh, I grant you that!' he said. 'Just imagine it! A public monument to Pal Joey![']" - p 553

These novels were excellent & I recommend them to people curious about mid-20th-century London culture. As for the rest of you? There's so much to read, I think I'd prioritize these novels fairly low - despite their excellence.

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