Customer Reviews

War Damage

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In 1949, ballet critic Freddie Buckingham leaves a party hosted by socialite Regine Milner and begins walking across Hampstead Heath when he is shot to death. The police investigate the homicide.

Detective Chief Inspector Plumer and Detective Sergeant Murray quickly find a horde of people with motives to kill overtly homosexual Freddie. People from his personal life and his professional life with grudges against him seem everywhere. Even the hostess with the mostest is considered a suspect. However, none from the performing arts, the homosexuals, the bohemians, politicians or starving socialites stand out from anyone else. All seem to have in common a refrain of rejoicong that Freddie's dead.

This is an exhilarating post WWII police procedural that has a Noir feel to it, but no detective is hard boiled; the Noir comes from the atmosphere of the "Heath" and London in 1949 as unexploded bombs remain from the war, buildings are derelict and damaged but people reside in them, and the gritty dark fog enhances every step of the plot. Aptly titled WAR DAMAGE is everywhere. Although the introduction to just about all the party goers seems overwhelming at first, fans will enjoy this fine historical whodunit as Freddie's death enables Elizabeth Wilson to provide a tour of the war torn city.

Harriet Klausner

This book is easy to read and a page turner and has interesting insights into life in Post War Britain. However, the plot became too contrived towards the end and it failed to be convincing. The epilogue was gratuitous and overall Wilson's War Damage was a let down after a promising start.
Another aspect which seemed flawed was the interaction between Regine(Reggie) with a number of the other characters. A loose woman she may have been but a number of her encounters seemed unrealistic with a woman who was trying desperately hard to be the 'society woman' of Hampstead. The further the narrative unravelled the flimsier and unrealistic the inter-relationships seemed: Charles Hallam and Arthur Carnforth and Regine and Eugine being obvious examples. Like all thrillers Wilson contrived to keep the reader guessing as to who was the murderer but sadly this meant that the events became more and more unrealistic. Wilson writes well and the book in many parts is enjoyable reading but the plot should not to be analysed too closely.

This book settles into a very nice rythym once the murder takes place.

It had all the usual ingredients of the genre, bigamy, adultery, politics, law enforcement, blackmail, homosexuality.

Parts of it reminded me a little of Pat Barker's excellent 'The Eye in the Door' but perhaps not as atmospheric as that novel. But don't be put off, it is still evocative and well crafted - the writing is pretty good over all.

A worthwhile read which brings out the post-war austerity and constantly reminds us here in the early 21st century just how small and claustrophobic the Anglo life was in the late 1940s.

Anxiety over potential scandals is magnified and while such anxieties appear to have diminished significantly in the past 50 years this book makes one ask - have they?

Today's tabloid media is rooted in the post war era with its censorious 'reporting' and yet the consumers of such media appear to be happily posting pictures of their genitals on the internet. Hypocrisy anyone...?

Yes, this book is all about hypocrisy.

Somewhere, possibly in the London Review of Books, I had read a good review of War Damage by Elizabeth Wilson. No great investment, thanks to Amazon, and the book was physically in great shape when it arrived, with quite rapid mail service -- all that stuff. But the writing was stiff and the characters quite lacking in depth and probably there were too many of them. "Not a good book," to cop a line from Jackie Mason, the night I overheard him speaking on the telephone (about a show not a book) in a west-side delicatessen. The message by Mason was to not invest in the show. Reading is an investment. Guess my advice.