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London Trilogy #3
Mr. Love and Justice
Frankie Love, a seaman turned pimp, and Edward Justice, a police constable, form an unlikely friendship
Paperback
First published January 1, 1960
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About the author
Colin MacInnes
26 books43 followersMacInnes was born in London, the son of singer James Campbell MacInnes and novelist Angela Thirkell, and was educated in Australia. He served in the British intelligence corps during World War II.
He was the author of a number of books depicting London youth and black immigrant culture during the 1950s, in particular City of Spades (1957), Absolute Beginners (1959) and Mr. Love and Justice (1960).
He was the author of a number of books depicting London youth and black immigrant culture during the 1950s, in particular City of Spades (1957), Absolute Beginners (1959) and Mr. Love and Justice (1960).
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
July 6, 2011
lackluster entry in macinnes' london trilogy. the parallel narratives are at first interesting but become rather tedious in the long run, perhaps because both central characters lack a certain reality - characterization is a bit flat, a bit too jokey. they would be better served as supporting characters in a larger, wider, richer novel. or maybe i was just looking for another Absolute Beginners, surely one of the most vibrant novels ever written. here, the canvas is black & white rather than blazing technicolor - which is a pity. the writing itself is not at fault - macinnes is a master. the problem is in the rather forgettable characterizations and the surprisingly unconvincing narrative.
August 12, 2020
Third and final book of Colin MacInnes' London 'trilogy', although it should be noted that the books are completely independent of each other. There is overlap in the themes addressed, but even here there are clear differences. The third book, for example, has relatively little to say about race, although this is a key concern of the first two titles.
These books are very much of their time, the late 1950's when London was transforming from a monochrome austere place to being a colourful capital. By understanding of the world is bookended by two things. The disasterous 1986 film adaptation of Absolute Beginners (guilty of being terrible in itself, and yet somehow not terrible enough to end Patsy Kensit's career) and the events surrounding the Profumo Scandal, memorably chronicled in Ludovico Kennedy's The Trial of Stephan Ward. As Kennedy makes clear what is real on trial here are the racy - and racially diverse - subcultures that challenge the values of the establishment. In a co-incidence Ward was charged with living off immoral earnings, a crime which figures each of these three books.
Each of the books makes a voyage into London as if it was a brave new world. The first book, City of Spades, is concerned with newly arrived black immigrants. Racial prejudice is clearly depicted, but the book describes the newcomers with glamour and sex appeal, bringing a certain level of excitement to an otherwise drab city. It is though probably guilty of dealing primarily in stereotypes. Absolute Beginners also encourages you to the world anew, this time through the eyes of a teenager. If you seen the film you might be surprised by the somewhat tawdry elements in the book, especially those relating to prostitution and pornography. The book is keen to distance itself from conventional morality, a key part of its anti-establishment world view. It almost goes without saying that the fashionable teenagers depicted here are a tiny subset of the teenage population as a whole. Like each book in the trilogy Mr Love and Justice is highly schematic in its form, pondering the now hackneyed dilemma of whether there real is much difference between the police and the criminals they are trying to catch.
So do MacInnes' books survive the test of time? The style is serviceable enough, but little more; the characterization is not especially profound; and at times the plots seem to be designed to do little more than produce incidents that would shock the average Daily Mail reader. And yet somehow there is a freshness and vigour to the books which makes them worth reading. A sense that important changes are being caught and captured in their infancy.
These books are very much of their time, the late 1950's when London was transforming from a monochrome austere place to being a colourful capital. By understanding of the world is bookended by two things. The disasterous 1986 film adaptation of Absolute Beginners (guilty of being terrible in itself, and yet somehow not terrible enough to end Patsy Kensit's career) and the events surrounding the Profumo Scandal, memorably chronicled in Ludovico Kennedy's The Trial of Stephan Ward. As Kennedy makes clear what is real on trial here are the racy - and racially diverse - subcultures that challenge the values of the establishment. In a co-incidence Ward was charged with living off immoral earnings, a crime which figures each of these three books.
Each of the books makes a voyage into London as if it was a brave new world. The first book, City of Spades, is concerned with newly arrived black immigrants. Racial prejudice is clearly depicted, but the book describes the newcomers with glamour and sex appeal, bringing a certain level of excitement to an otherwise drab city. It is though probably guilty of dealing primarily in stereotypes. Absolute Beginners also encourages you to the world anew, this time through the eyes of a teenager. If you seen the film you might be surprised by the somewhat tawdry elements in the book, especially those relating to prostitution and pornography. The book is keen to distance itself from conventional morality, a key part of its anti-establishment world view. It almost goes without saying that the fashionable teenagers depicted here are a tiny subset of the teenage population as a whole. Like each book in the trilogy Mr Love and Justice is highly schematic in its form, pondering the now hackneyed dilemma of whether there real is much difference between the police and the criminals they are trying to catch.
So do MacInnes' books survive the test of time? The style is serviceable enough, but little more; the characterization is not especially profound; and at times the plots seem to be designed to do little more than produce incidents that would shock the average Daily Mail reader. And yet somehow there is a freshness and vigour to the books which makes them worth reading. A sense that important changes are being caught and captured in their infancy.
February 20, 2008
Frankie Love out of work seaman has become a pimp out of the necessity of working; Detective-constable Justice has recently taken a promotion from uniform into the vice squad; Colin MacInnes has set them on a collision course that illustrates the dark underbelly of 1960’s London.
In MacInnes’ previous London novels right and wrong were easily defined so we knew whom we should be rooting for and whom we knew would be blighted by the writer’s indignation. Here things are not so black and white but grey. Love is confused with lust whilst justice is in fact the law and its thin line is crossed by police and criminal alike.
In short we don’t really know who should prosper but find that none of the stories cast do. However us, the voyeurs looking on, actually do, we receive a very tight narrative which is as relevant as it was some forty odd years ago.
In MacInnes’ previous London novels right and wrong were easily defined so we knew whom we should be rooting for and whom we knew would be blighted by the writer’s indignation. Here things are not so black and white but grey. Love is confused with lust whilst justice is in fact the law and its thin line is crossed by police and criminal alike.
In short we don’t really know who should prosper but find that none of the stories cast do. However us, the voyeurs looking on, actually do, we receive a very tight narrative which is as relevant as it was some forty odd years ago.
May 14, 2016
The final volume in MacInnes’s London trilogy, after disaffected youth and the emerging black city he moves into the world of 1960s sex workers and vice squad coppers. Frank Love is a seaman stranded without a boat: Edward Justice a new recruit to law enforcement at the very start of a posting in CID. Both have complicated relationships with the women in their lives.
At first a casual pick-up in a jukebox joint Frank finds himself involved with a working girl who needs a ponce. The law has just changed and whilst prostitution itself isn’t an offence the means of procuring customers – soliciting on the street or maintaining a brothel - are. Managing the inevitable encounters with the magistrates makes it sensible to have a young man on hand as a line of defence against corruption of the public morals. There’s an awkward issue of how living of the earnings of prostitution is a crime, but a sensible girl will always be able to manage that.
Edward Justice’s problem is that his girl is a copper-hater – or at least the daughter of a copper-hater. Fitted up years before for a crime he didn’t commit the father is on the records of the police fraternity as a man with a grudge who should not be associated with. Back in the period of MacInnes’s novel the police force operated with a code of morals that required its officers to be either respectable bachelors or married. If intending to marry the prospective partner would be vetted by senior officers to see if she met the standard of straight-lacedness that the constabulary required.
The management of their not too dissimilar problems in having things about themselves that need to be kept hidden means that the worlds of the ponce and the police officer begin to overlap. Their ‘girls’ end up alongside each other as neighbours in a block of flats in Kilburn. The two protagonist males flit in and out as their respective arrangements require.
But life become complicated when the star sleuth in Edward’s vice squad team takes a visceral dislike to him and makes his personal life the subject of investigation. Meanwhile Frank’s girl becomes the subject of the attention of another line of inquiries after a client starts to throw around allegations about the theft of an item of value.
That’s the plot but the real story is London during a period in the late 1950s-early 1960s when the longue durée of the puritanical morality of the Edwardian epoch was finally being picked apart by the forces of change. For MacInnes that came from the rise of a mood amongst young people that they would not quite so easily be assimilated into the world of adulthood as they once were. Views about Britain’s place in the world were becoming confused as its subject colonial people turned up on the streets of its cities and showed themselves to be so much more worldly-wise than their ‘betters’. And sex was everywhere – ready to be picked up and paid for as easily as night down at the boozer or the dog-track.
Morality is very much the theme of Mr Love and Mr Justice. In the hands of both the sex industry and the police for its gets quite a pasting. If we are ever to live in a society where people can operated with a greater degree of honesty and transparency in their lives some sort of revolution against prevailing authority will clearly have to take place.
At first a casual pick-up in a jukebox joint Frank finds himself involved with a working girl who needs a ponce. The law has just changed and whilst prostitution itself isn’t an offence the means of procuring customers – soliciting on the street or maintaining a brothel - are. Managing the inevitable encounters with the magistrates makes it sensible to have a young man on hand as a line of defence against corruption of the public morals. There’s an awkward issue of how living of the earnings of prostitution is a crime, but a sensible girl will always be able to manage that.
Edward Justice’s problem is that his girl is a copper-hater – or at least the daughter of a copper-hater. Fitted up years before for a crime he didn’t commit the father is on the records of the police fraternity as a man with a grudge who should not be associated with. Back in the period of MacInnes’s novel the police force operated with a code of morals that required its officers to be either respectable bachelors or married. If intending to marry the prospective partner would be vetted by senior officers to see if she met the standard of straight-lacedness that the constabulary required.
The management of their not too dissimilar problems in having things about themselves that need to be kept hidden means that the worlds of the ponce and the police officer begin to overlap. Their ‘girls’ end up alongside each other as neighbours in a block of flats in Kilburn. The two protagonist males flit in and out as their respective arrangements require.
But life become complicated when the star sleuth in Edward’s vice squad team takes a visceral dislike to him and makes his personal life the subject of investigation. Meanwhile Frank’s girl becomes the subject of the attention of another line of inquiries after a client starts to throw around allegations about the theft of an item of value.
That’s the plot but the real story is London during a period in the late 1950s-early 1960s when the longue durée of the puritanical morality of the Edwardian epoch was finally being picked apart by the forces of change. For MacInnes that came from the rise of a mood amongst young people that they would not quite so easily be assimilated into the world of adulthood as they once were. Views about Britain’s place in the world were becoming confused as its subject colonial people turned up on the streets of its cities and showed themselves to be so much more worldly-wise than their ‘betters’. And sex was everywhere – ready to be picked up and paid for as easily as night down at the boozer or the dog-track.
Morality is very much the theme of Mr Love and Mr Justice. In the hands of both the sex industry and the police for its gets quite a pasting. If we are ever to live in a society where people can operated with a greater degree of honesty and transparency in their lives some sort of revolution against prevailing authority will clearly have to take place.
August 18, 2015
A real time-sensitive novel of 1960 from the very complex pen of gay & 'constitutionally racist'? malcontent MacInnes, which 'peels back the foreskin' of London's world of barely-disguised vice & seedy, symbiotic relationships between the prostitutes,ponces & policemen & the moral majority,who turn a blind-eye to the oldest profession's insistent stamina & indominatability.This short novel, the last of a loose-lipped trilogy about post-war London,has an almost 'fly-on-the-wall documentary' feel to its banal,metropolitan set-pieces...MacInnes was perhaps ahead of his time...1960?...pre-Beatles & 'The Avengers'? or 'Play For Today'??!...but fails to blaze too fiercely in a literary way, as none of the well-sketched characters are 'fictional' in any real sense. A curious book then...but a good,if slow,read which catches the last moments of the post-war greyness & drab morbidity of a shattered city - a key scene takes place with a 'courting couple' in a bombed-out house! - before the revolutionary changes which cascaded down on London in the years to come. MacInnes left mixed reviews both of his work & of his personal relationships, much of his reputation tied-in/tied-up? with the arrival of 'colourful' new denizens of Notting Hill & Earl's Court,the new liberal consensus on homosexuality & a debatable interpretation of personal liberties.
March 2, 2018
This book was a real disappointment. After reading City of Spades, which was quite engaging and pleasant and Absolute Beginners that was excellent, totally love it, I found Mr Love And Justice boring and poor. The story line could have been interesting, but, as much as Colin MacInnes tried, the two main characters were depressingly flatten. I wasn’t able to have any sympathy on either side, when, I believe, what the author mostly wanted from the reader was to sympathies with both of them. I nearly gave up on it, hardly ever happen with any of the books I’ve read so far.
September 11, 2009
Interesting and uncommon book crossing the footsteps of two main and symbolic characters. Mr. Love and Mr. Justice represent the two faces of the same coin: prissiness. A sort of urban prissiness that rhymes with hypocrisy and leads both Love and Justice to collide into each other thanks to a clockwork mechanism.
I appreciated the structure of the novel, alternating Mr. Love with Mr. Justice before the two plot lines are juxtaposed. Many dialogues are very well written and the way MacInnes investigated on a certain mankind in London is admirable and impartial.
Yet, this book got old very quickly. It's incredible how far may look this late 1950s London nowadays. That is why "Mr Love and Justice" suffers of precocious senility. And it's a pity.
I appreciated the structure of the novel, alternating Mr. Love with Mr. Justice before the two plot lines are juxtaposed. Many dialogues are very well written and the way MacInnes investigated on a certain mankind in London is admirable and impartial.
Yet, this book got old very quickly. It's incredible how far may look this late 1950s London nowadays. That is why "Mr Love and Justice" suffers of precocious senility. And it's a pity.
March 17, 2017
"Mr Love and Justice" is the final volume of MacInnes' London series set in the post-war re-build of the late 50's- early 60's. The story focuses on the worlds of Mr Frankie Love, an unemployed seaman who's been roped into the world of pouncing, and Mr Edward Justice, a recently promoted Police officer, who's struggling with his obligations to the force and to his girlfriend, daughter of a criminal. "Mr Love and Justice" resides in the blurry line between between law and the sex industry, falling into the shaded grey area of London life. An enjoyable read, but I don't feel that it has the 'punch' of the other two books in the series.
January 8, 2015
The third and final book of Colin Macinnes' London novels. It's very good. Some reviewers find this one disappointing after Absolute Beginners, however The pace, characterisation, humour and plot are equally as good. The only difference with the other novels in the set is that none of the main characters are likeable. If you need someone to like in a novel then perhaps you should read Absolute Beginners first.
December 15, 2015
And having read this one as well, it's not hard to see why Absolute Beginners is the enduring entry in the trilogy (retro rather than dated, clever bits, oh so of the moment, but a moment we keep trying to recapture).
April 7, 2022
There are many criticisms of this book that say it is outdated and no longer relevant. However, for me its real interest lies in the historical record of that time. This is not a book written in the 21st century about the 1950s it is a book written in 1960 by someone who clearly experienced all that he describes. Finding out the innate nature of corruption in the London police is not a surprise but finding out that a constable had to live in bachelor quarters if not married and any wife be subject to his superiors approval is a shock.
The plot regarding a stolen snuff box unfortunately does not stand up and treads into dangerous agatha christie territory. However the two principle characters are well drawn with some excellent descriptive language starting out as enemies and ending up comrades in misfortune.
An original and unusual novel easy to read and rewarding in many ways.
The plot regarding a stolen snuff box unfortunately does not stand up and treads into dangerous agatha christie territory. However the two principle characters are well drawn with some excellent descriptive language starting out as enemies and ending up comrades in misfortune.
An original and unusual novel easy to read and rewarding in many ways.
December 27, 2023
I found the last book of the trilogy to be the best of them, or at least the one I liked the most.
The stories are good, the characterizations are not as flat as some suggest, and the humour was spot on for me. All characters expound or propound deep philosophical questions about society, sex and appearences. I liked it.
The stories are good, the characterizations are not as flat as some suggest, and the humour was spot on for me. All characters expound or propound deep philosophical questions about society, sex and appearences. I liked it.
December 19, 2022
Rather a departure from the first two novels in the trilogy, which seemed more exuberant in their celebration of the possibilities of postwar London, even as they acknowledged racial intolerance, etc. Still damn good, however.
July 31, 2022
DNFd it. It wasn’t for me tbf
August 6, 2025
a nice commentary on the relationship between love and justice
August 19, 2024
I liked the writing more than the story.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews