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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. 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…
I really enjoyed this story, plunged into gangland London in the early twentieth century, this was a compelling story. 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.
Games
Diamond has three major romances in the novel. How did Keane balance the romance aspect of the story with the thriller? 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. 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.
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?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. He had two brothers - both are now dead. His closest friend has been found hanging from a London bridge. As the police wrestle with a seemingly unsolvable case, Max is forced to revisit his painful past to find answers to a mystery that seems to make no sense at all. Who is targeting his family and why? 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. 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. 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. 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. A sliver of panic was suddenly lodged in Diamond’s gut, making it clench. She looked at the dish of porridge as the warder withdrew. She knew she wouldn’t eat it. She couldn’t. 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.
Finally, we asked Keane if she could put together her dream panel for ThrillerFest, who would be on it, why, and what would the topic be? 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. Jessie wrote Dirty Game, her first novel, in just three months. She submitted it to six agents and within weeks, she had an agent and a three-book, six-figure deal. Jessie Keane, the writer, was born. 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.
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