No curtain call for me, I almost left during the interval

Title: Curtain Call

Author: Anthony Quinn 

Tags: #westend #theatre #crime

Discovered: Radio 4 Book at Bedtime

Where read: (In part) Covent Garden

The Word's Shortlist view:

Curtain Call is a novel that defies genre. Its ingredients include murder mystery, romantic comedy and historical fiction but the trouble is that I’m not sure Quinn got the recipe right.

The most compelling parts of the novel feature the theatre land murders and the hunt for the ‘tie-pin killer’. This fear is brilliantly played out in the dark and foggy streets of Soho where ingénues slip between the lamp lit streets in the grimy reality of the 'glittering' West End. The problem is that this crime thriller plot fades far too deeply into the background. 

Some characters are convincingly well drawn; Nina Land the star of the West End and witness to a violent murder and Jimmy Erskine the ageing theatre critic and raconteur are interesting and believable but others in the camp ensemble are more hackneyed.  The depiction of the crowd at the drag ball for example, whilst probably historically accurate, read like comic relief rather than a depiction of the louche theatre land culture that I’m sure Quinn intended to portray.

The most compelling parts of the novel feature the theatre land murders and the hunt for the ‘tie-pin killer’. This fear is brilliantly played out in the dark and foggy streets of Soho where ingénues slip between the lamp lit streets in the grimy reality of the 'glittering' West End. The problem is that this crime thriller plot fades far too deeply into the background.

Witticisms aside, the novel lacks the humour that the cover reviews rave about but worse still the story lacks tension. Had the ‘tie-pin killer’ story have been given the space to breath this wouldn’t have been an issue but in switching between genre and plot points the actual story falls between the Soho pavement cracks. At times the curtain needed to come down on one story and come up again on another. No curtain call from me, I almost left at the interval.

I picked this book up after reading some rave reviews in the media, notably Peter Stanford’s 5 star review in the Daily Telegraph and Viv Groskop in The Observer. Both reviews praised Quinn’s novel, “It had me on the edge of my seat” claims Stanford whilst Groskop revealed “I can’t recommend this book highly enough”. Powerful praise indeed. The reality is that in Curtain Call there is a brilliant story that gets lost in a book that doesn’t know what it is.

Twitter: @wordsshortlist

Instagram: your_next_read