It is important that we continue to promote these adverts as our local businesses need as much support as possible during these challenging times. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. It just absorbed me totally, I was so completely in it, I loved it and I wrote it very quickly, about three months.

Queenie wouldn’t miss him – Max knew that – but Dad had earned a bit on the Corona lorries sometimes and now they didn’t have even that small wage coming in. Dock worker’s houses had fitted carpets, TVs and the latest radiograms – and every so often a crate of goods got damaged by being dropped onto the concrete unloading bay – usually deliberately – and so there was always a surfeit of marketable stuff to sell. I loved how Keane delves right back in time to the high days of the 1950s when to rub shoulders with gangsters brought a certain cachet, and she name drops the celebrities who were closely associated with the scene - both on the right side of the law, and those most definitely well beyond it. It was only later on, as they grew older, that they realised she was simply giving the best of the food to them and doing without herself.

I enjoyed the short chapters, and the fast pace of the plot and was hooked into the writing from Page 1. Tone moved it down the road a safe distance, just on the remote possibility that the place was connected to the local nick.

Mostly, it’s been the perfect life for a homebody introvert who likes to just plod along at her own pace. Please note that the value we offer for your items may be reduced upon receipt depending on their condition. Having been used to a married life full of nothing but dull misery, she could admit – only to herself, mind – that she had gone a little wild when all that was over. Suddenly, free of matrimonial tedium, she felt like a woman again and it was wonderful; men paid her attention.

But she had to have some focus, so as the years went by, all her attention was lavished upon her sons. Both his brothers are dead, but he still has good men around him in London, and now might be a good time to gather his ex-wife and daughter into the fold to protect them from harm. Apart from getting established in the protection business, he was also getting to be an expert thief.

Nora is killed by Jonjo and Bruno goes it alone in London determined to work for the Delaneys, the rival gang. You could imagine Jonjo running to fat in his middle years; his sheer size meant that he found it easy to intimidate smaller, weaker boys – like Eddie, who was almost girlish in his fragility. But he suspected he might one of these fine days get knocked flat on his arse if he did, not only by Max himself but by Queenie too, who could be a right dragon when the mood was on her.

We then skip forward in time, Max and Annie have married…and divorced, separated from each other for more than a year they are still drawn to each other like moths to a flame. Max and his brothers had been used to seeing Queenie with her mouth turned down, wearing drab unflattering gear, cursing Dad as the useless waster sat there in his armchair, reading the Racing Post and smoking roll-ups. He lounged day after day in his chair, complaining about the government, drinking beer and doing a fabulous impression of fuck-all. As the two threads come together, taking us up to the present-day action, the danger intensifies, for Annie, Max, their daughter Layla and even for long-lost brother, Bruno – whom Max still knows nothing about! She flirted right back at them, and Max started to wonder what the hell she was up to, acting the tart like that.

All my readers have supported me all the way through, everybody has been absolutely wonderful and I really appreciate it, I really do.Jonjo might have given it a shot, if only he’d had the merest bit of self-discipline, which he did not. But if Max poked Clive on the jaw – as he longed to do – he could see that Queenie was only going to come roaring to the bastard’s defence.