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Crime’s a man’s business. So they say. Who was that small figure then, slender enough to trot along the moonlit track, swift and low, virtually invisible? Who was it that covered the green signal with a glove to stop the train, while the two others took care of the driver and his mate? Could it have been one Queenie Dove, survivor of the Depression and the Blitz, not to mention any number of scrapes with the law?
Queenie Dove is a self-proclaimed genius when it comes to thieving and escape. Daring, clever and sexy, she ducked and dived through the streets of London from the East End through Soho to Mayfair, graduating from childhood shop-lifting to more glamorous crimes in the post-war decades. So was she wicked through and through, or more sinned against than sinning? Here she tells a vivacious tale of trickery and adventure, but one with more pain and heartbreak than its heroine cares to admit. Yes, luck often favoured her, but that is only part of the story.
Queenie Dove is a self-proclaimed genius when it comes to thieving and escape. Daring, clever and sexy, she ducked and dived through the streets of London from the East End through Soho to Mayfair, graduating from childhood shop-lifting to more glamorous crimes in the post-war decades. So was she wicked through and through, or more sinned against than sinning? Here she tells a vivacious tale of trickery and adventure, but one with more pain and heartbreak than its heroine cares to admit. Yes, luck often favoured her, but that is only part of the story.
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Reviews
Gloriously enjoyable...Queenie bursts out of these pages, longing for life, as we are drawn into her world by Dawson's terse, electric prose. I've seldom read a novel with such a sense of excitement.
'Jill Dawson is one of those writers so gifted and assured you relax just five words in...heroine Queenie is no angel. But she's resourceful, funny, brave and beautiful. You're on her side from that fifth word'
A treat to read
Dawson, as ever, delves deep into her subject matter, combining fast-paced narrative with astute, piercing reflection on more complex matters
She leaves us with some unforgettable images..:It is admirable, too, for the way its fizzing narrative is grounded in a cool-eyed awareness of the social and sexual injustices of the mid-20th century
'Far more than just crime caper. An award winning poet, Dawson shrewdly uses her heroine's undeniably clever but poorly educated point of view to evocative and sometimes lyrical effect, the author's use of language pure, simple and shimmering."
Heart-rippingly painful and joyously playful. A major prize-winning contender.
Pacy and atmospheric, this tale of a girl attempting to dictate her own destiny is wickedly good
Despite its surface thrills and spills and Krays era glamour, Lucky Bunny is a novel of great concern, human sympathy and seriousness. It is a novel of ideas and society, disguised as a romp...In the end I understood and admired Queenie Dove - and admired Jill Dawson, too, for creating something so fine from such brutish elements.