BOOKSHELF

The Wardrobe Mistress

This latest novel from the author of Asylum and Spider is set in the freezing, fogbound austerity of 1947 London. We open on the funeral of Charlie ‘Gricey’ Grice, one of the great actors of his day, and pan across our key players – his widow Joan, a theatre wardrobe mistress; his daughter Vera, an exceptional if troubled actor; and Vera’s mysterious husband, the theatre impresario Julian Glass. Not long after her husband’s death, Joan begins a complicated friendship with Charlie’s understudy for Malvolio in Twelfth Night, his final role. The quietly ambitious Frank Stone had studied Gricey’s performance so well that his impersonation seems to

Joan like possession.

Joan starts to tailor Charlie’s clothes for Frank, delving into her husband’s voluminous wardrobe. But as this new intimacy grows, Joan – a Jew – makes the odious discovery that her husband was a fascist sympathiser. Now she must keep both her own and her husband’s secrets from their highly-strung daughter.

As comedy turns to tragedy, the wheels of the plot spin fast and true, and a dark and compelling tale unfolds. There is blood revenge in it, mistaken identity, and unrequited love.

This enthralling novel deftly evokes a powerful sense of place, with period details of austerity and backstage life subtly but credibly sketched in.

Sombre in mood and bleak in conclusion, it is a powerfully absorbing story of a woman betrayed in death, as in life.