It is 1956, and Lizzy is working in Soho when Peace comes to stay. Peace is a beautiful sixteen-year-old part-Chinese girl, the daughter - it turns out - of her employer Bandy Bunion's estranged sister. Peace has been at a boarding school in the country - but, tired of feeling lonely and of being bullied, she has run away, and does not intend to go back.
Lizzy, who lives above the nightclub run by Bandy and Sugarplum Flaherty, offers to take her in; she lost her own daughter - Rosie's best friend - to leukaemia two years previously and she feels a special bond with Peace. Life, Lizzy also feels, has been rather too quiet recently; but things are about to change dramatically. Bandy has got a new man in her life - a crook for certain, Lizzy thinks, especially when Bandy's valuables start to go missing. And Lizzy's got a new man too. TC is Rosie's dad and everyone's favourite policeman. But is he interested in her?
But when Peace goes missing a second time, and no one knows where she's gone, it looks as though there's only one thing to do. Lizzy asks TC to help her find Peace, and the first place they must visit is the seedy dock area in Limehouse. The home of the Chinese community, it's a very dangerous place indeed...
**
From Publishers Weekly
The follow-up to Trouble in Paradise finds the center of Granger's working-class world moving from London's East End to the bohemian Soho of 1956. Lizzie Robbins, estranged from her husband, abruptly assumes care for a Chinese girl with cloudy parentage called Peace. When the conscientious Peace vanishes, Lizzie and her neighbors fear she has been kidnapped, and to solve the crime must delve into London's Chinese community and the stranglehold of its gangsters and triads. In contrast to Paradise, this novel deals with a single major crime and, with an adult narrator driving the plot, explores issues of sex and marriage. Granger's strong narrative voice and the tug of community, of characters readers can care about instantaneously, give this book its force and charm. As always, Granger writes about outsidersοΏ½cross-dressers, clairvoyants, petty consοΏ½with utter warmth and not a trace of condescension. There's no parade of bodies, none of the perverse genius of Ruth Rendell or the public school sorts populating Elizabeth George, just characters and unforgettable community. (Jan.)
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From Booklist
Starred Review Granger's terrific series set in 1950s Soho continues with the lovable Lizzy Robbins working as a seamstress in a women's dress shop called Freddy the Frock's run by the flamboyant Freddy and his partner, Antony. With a cast of characters as colorful and diverse as Freddy's multihued bolts of fabric, Granger invites readers into a fascinating world that seems to vacillate wildly between sin and virtue, with sin often appearing to be the preferred choice. When a lovely young Anglo-Chinese girl, Peace, comes to stay with her "Aunt" Bandy (who runs a bar and lives with a man named Sugar Plum, who sometimes wears women's clothing), Lizzy finds herself in the middle of Peace and Bandy's volatile arguments. Offering Peace refuge in her flat seems like a good solution, until the girl disappears without a trace. The quirky gang of characters who inhabit Maggie and Bert's cafe by day and Bandy's bar by night join with Lizzy to find the girl. Although Granger does an excellent job of generating suspense and evoking the mores and prejudices of 1956, her greatest strength is in character development: a more unusual and likable group of misfits would be hard to find in any mystery series. Jenny McLarin
Copyright οΏ½ American Library Association. All rights reserved