Diamond: BEHIND EVERY STRONG WOMAN IS AN EPIC STORY: historical crime fiction at its most gripping

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Now calling herself ‘Diamond Dupree’, she goes to Paris to become an artist’s model but the world there is brutal and cutthroat and she soon falls on hard times. When she manages to escape at the end of the First World War, she leaves behind a mystery – and a dead man. I have to tell you, rich is better. But the great thing about life is, even painful events pass, and if you make bad choices, hopefully you learn from them. It was the female warder, grim-faced as usual. It was always the same one. She was bringing Diamond’s breakfast.

I really enjoyed this story, plunged into gangland London in the early twentieth century, this was a compelling story. I used to paint a lot in my youth,” Keane says, “but I have to say, words are so much better than oils. In writing DIAMOND, I’m calling on all the five senses of my readers, asking them to smell the cordite from gunfire in London and the roses in Marquis’s French chateau gardens, to hear Bow bells in the East End, to absorb the whole thrilling experience. To me, much as I love them, paintings just can’t compete.”

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Along with those historical figures, Keane puts Diamond in the same room as Gertrude Stein and Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald. What tempted her to bring those historical icons into the narrative of the novel? My thanks to the lovely Courtney at ED PR for inviting me to take part in the blog tour for Jessie Keane’s newest novel, ‘ ‘Diamond’ by Jessie Keane, which is out from Hodder Books on February 3rd 2022. Diamond Butcher is a beautiful girl and the daughter of Warren Butcher the head of the Wolfe gang who run the streets of Soho. Her mother is Frenchie a woman that her father met whilst in Paris and they fell in love. Diamond also has two brothers Archie and Owen who is a bit simple after an accident at birth. The oldest and only girl in a family of London thieves, reinvented as Diamond Dupree, the latest Paris ‘it girl’ - the lover of an aristocrat, fearless and beautiful she is so compelling and a great female character. I really loved her, she was the personification of her name.

When Warren is murdered, Victor Diamond’s Uncle worms the way into the family’s life and takes over the family firm and physically abuses Diamond to do his bidding. She fears for her life so much she flees and goes to Paris. But when she gets there the city is not the beautiful one that her mother has portrayed in her stories. It is hard graft, and she meets all sorts of different characters along the way. We then skip forward in time, Max and Annie have married…and divorced, separated from each other for more than a year they are still drawn to each other like moths to a flame. Old enmities persist, the Delaneys want Max to pay for times past. Smashed nightclubs, old mates dead, witnesses drowned. Who is on whose side? Although this is set in the past, this book felt quite contemporary to me. It’s honest and believable. There is pain, love and hardship, life laid bare, it’s a real rip roaring piece of historical crime fiction. My first read by this author and it won’t be my last. This is historical crime drama at its strongest. A fabulous protagonist in the guise of Diamond Butcher, who reinvents herself as Diamond Dupree, and set in London and Paris in the early twentieth century, covering the period before and after WW1. Diamond has three major romances in the novel. How did Keane balance the romance aspect of the story with the thriller?It’s the early 20th century, and a desperate young girl changes her name and flees the confines of her brutal, dominating gangland family in London. This felt like a huge family saga, a cross between Peaky Blinders, Eastenders and Downton Abbey! It’s tough and gritty, but very addictive and I stopped reading anything else so I could finish this. We follow Diamond Butcher and her family, once high up in the echelons of London gangland crime - now forced under the heel of her Uncle Victor who runs things. Diamond longs to escape and have her revenge on the Wolfe family who had such a feud with her family and killed her father. waves hand* No need to dwell on the fact it’s my first JK read. I will fix that egregious error as soon as I can finagle my TBR as I need more of this world.

Circumstances conspire to make Diamond culpable of a crime which carries the death penalty and, whilst the world is at war, and then, during peace time, Diamond fights a war of her own, for survival. But how long can Diamond avoid the long arm of the law? And will her crimes finally catch up with her? There’s a strong element of ‘beloved enemy’ in DIAMOND,” Keane says. “She has three romances, and we’re just waiting for her all the way through to finally find the right one and forget the rest. It helps to keep the tension going, right through to the end.” But can she escape the long arm of the law and the hangman’s noose, when the crimes of her past finally catch up with her?For fans of Martina Cole and Kimberley Chambers, as well as viewers of Peaky Blinders , this is historical crime fiction at its most compelling. Briefly, born into the Butcher family who rule the streets around Soho her life is disrupted when her father is killed in a fight with the local Wolfe gang and her family’s lives are brutally changed with the arrival of her uncle. Fleeing to France to find a friend of her mothers she assumes a new identity and becomes a nude model for an artist. This brings her into the seedy world of Paris in the 1920s and her life is not easy. Following a murder she is forced to leave Paris and return to her family in London becoming a feared gangland queen. There she meets again the handsome Earl, Richard Beaumont and ignites a love affair doomed by the differences in class. Diamond Butcher sat in her cell and listened to the sounds going on all around her. Somewhere in the big stark echoing chill of Holloway Prison, a woman was wailing. Another was shouting and banging on the bars of her cell. Diamond made no sound. She watched a finger of daylight send a column of gold onto the cell wall and thought this can’t be happening. But can we puhlease? *sighs* Coz, I. Was. Fascinated!! Stiletto knives… *shivers*. I know my friends won’t be surprised in the least *snorts*.

The short chapters increase the sense of urgency for the Butcher family as they begin the novel on the run, and that running and searching for a base, a sense of home, continues throughout this rather hefty novel. It is sweeping in a sense of taking in so much of the twentieth century, and the changes in both society and political arenas. Dramatic, unforgettable and wonderfully realised, Diamond is not a woman to be be easily forgotten. Diamond escapes to Paris and away from the violence and fear of living with Victor. But soon trouble finds her again…oh this book runs and runs. Leaving behind a dead body and forced to return to London, she meets Richard Beaumont, an aristocratic son, damaged by war but sparks fly between them.This book had me in a chokehold! Annie and Max (along with a certain someone!) consumed my thoughts and I couldn’t devour the book fast enough. Before you ask, yes *nods*, I can confirm that I held daily briefings with The Mommy detailing the current state of play in the book alongside theories on personal agendas and who’d copped it next! I was fit to burst with the need to talk to someone about this story. Jessie lives in Hampshire with her partner who used to be her next-door neighbour before they fell in love. Now a Sunday Times Top 10 bestselling author of 16 books with sales that exceed 1.5 million copies, Jessie continues to write compelling, strong female characters who thrive despite their circumstances – just like she has. She has had enough of it in her lifetime-her father, the head of the Butcher gang, driven to France by his arch enemies, the Wolfe family, returning to London only to be murdered, leaving his wife and 3 children at the mercy of their enemies. But even worse, left at the mercy of their relatives…