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Friday, 16 October 2020

DANGEROUS IN LOVE - Book review

DANGEROUS IN LOVE

Leslie Thomas


 

Published in 1987, this is Thomas’s second Dangerous Davies novel.  It’s a long time since I read the first, The Last Detective. This one is a joy to read; it’s droll, with slapstick, social commentary, and just plenty of laughs. 

Bound to upset those who are easily offended as it's decidedly non-PC.

Davies is curious about the drowning in the local canal of a familiar homeless person, Lofty Brock. He can’t have been drunk, he was teetotal. Was he pushed? Helping him investigate is Jemma Duval, a beautiful black hymn-singing social worker and Davies’s pal, the workshy philosopher Mod. It’s virtually love at first sight when Davies meets Jemma, who has a missing tooth in the centre of her mouth. ‘Until he had seen that missing tooth he had never realized that something could be so potent, even beautiful, by its absence.’ (p24).

There are two more Dangerous Davies novels in the series.

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