Pip Granger No Peace For the Wicked

No Peace For the Wicked

Pip Granger

Poisoned Pen, Dec 2005, $24.95, 310 pp.

ISBN 1590582160

It is1956 and Soho, England is a combination red light district and Greenwich Village with a definite feel of a neighborhood community. Same sex relationships, threesome trysts and having sex without being married is tolerated. Lizzy is still recovering from the death of her daughter a year and a half ago with the help of the people in the neighborhood especially those who hang at the diner on Old Compton Road owned and operated by Maggie and her husband Bert with help from their adopted daughter Rosie.

At the local nightclub run by Bandy and Sugar Plum Flaherty, the former's ward Peace, a Chinese- student, has run away from the boarding school and stay at Bandy's place. Bandy wants her to return to school but the child has been subjected to the prejudice of the students. Bandy, who is in the middle of a hot blooded affair accuses the girl of stealing her pearl jewelry. A hurt Peace goes to is stay with Lizzye who happily take her in. She comes to think of the girl as a daughter so when she disappears, she rallies all the people in the neighborhood to find out where she is staying. They learn that Peace has been kidnapped; using all their considerable resources, they try to find the girl and whoever is behind it who wants her shipped back to China.

Pip Granger has written an exciting mystery wrapped around a family saga. Lizzie doesn't know that when she takes Peace into her home she will end up dealing with Chinese Tongs and Triads, kidnappers and eloping lovers but even if she did know, she would choose the same path because she loves Peace. The characters are realistic and the bohemian setting of Soho is vividly described so that readers will identify it with the locale before it fell apart. This is a thought provoking historical work that readers will enjoy very much.

Harriet Klausner