The story centers on , the ruthless matriarch and "queen" of Soho's nightlife, who has just been released from prison.
Reviews from The Guardian and TIME praise the novel as an "elegant and intricate" masterpiece that perfectly captures the "shimmer and sordidness" of the era.
Alongside Nellie and her six ambitious children, the plot follows DCI John Frobisher , a detective determined to clean up the Soho clubs, and Gwendolen Kelling , a former battlefield nurse searching for two runaway girls. Reader & Critical Reception
Set in 1926, the novel captures a London still reeling from WWI, where the glitz of jazz clubs masks a darker underbelly of corruption, gangsters, and missing girls.