WAR DAMAGE PB – ELIZABETH WILSON

London in the aftermath of WW2 is a beaten down, hungry place, so it s no wonder that Regine Milner s Sunday house parties in her Hampstead home are so popular. Everyone comes to Reggie s on a Sunday: ballet dancers and cabinet ministers, left-over Mosleyites alongside flamboyant homosexuals like Freddie Buckingham. And when Freddie turns up dead on the Heath one Sunday night there is no shortage of suspects. War Damage is both a high-class thriller and a wonderful evocation of Britain staggering back to its feet after the privations of the War. And in Regine Milner it possesses a truly memorable heroine. She s full of secrets – just what did happen in Shanghai before the war? – and surprises – Reggie s living proof that sexual experimentation was alive and well long before the sixties.