Odd Flamingo

by Nina Bawden, Gwendoline Butler

Nina Bawden made her mark early in her career as a writer of excellent mysteries, especially remarkable for her observation of character. Out-of-print for many years, seven of these classic novels are now available through Bello.

Genres: Mystery, British Literature, London, Crime

192 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1954

About the author

Nina Bawden was a popular British novelist and children's writer. Her mother was a teacher and her father a marine.

When World War II broke out she spent the school holidays at a farm in Shropshire along with her mother and her brothers, but lived in Aberdare, Wales, during term time.
Bawden attended Somerville College, Oxford, where she gained a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics.

Her novels include Carrie's War, Peppermint Pig, and The Witch's Daughter.

A number of her works have been dramatised by BBC Children's television, and many have been translated into various languages. In 2002 she was badly injured in the Potters Bar rail crash, and her husband Austen Kark was killed.

Bawden passed away at her home in London on 22 August 2012.

Reviews

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Will Hunt, a solicitor, receives a phone call from the wife of an old friend: can he come and help? When he complies, he discovers that a young woman has turned up at his friend's house saying that he has impregnated and abandoned her. When the young woman disappears and a body is discovered, Will finds himself investigating deeper and deeper into a murky criminal underworld, culminating in being caught up in the action.

I enjoyed reading this story but that probably owes more to that fact that work has been stressful and it was nice to drift into something familiar and easy to read. But I didn't love the story. I found the character of Will unlikeable and unrealistic. I think the author is trying to present a drippy, boring man as a main character, which can be interesting, but Will's constant reflections on his feelings, his over concern about what people look like (and the odd judgements he draws from this), and his flip-flopping between adoring and despising people makes him unpleasant and frustrating to read. He didn't quite ring true for me as a person, and the narrative might have benefitted from being from the third person point of view to give some distance from his thoughts.

[Sarah Thornton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really well-written, intriguing and full of characters you'd love to hate.

[Justine Shenton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good thriller full of twists and turns and the atmosphere of the London underworld

[Ellen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well written but just unrelenting misery! All the characters were so unappealing.

[Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nina Bawden's second published novel, one of a few mystery novels she wrote at the beginning of her career. Not a flawless novel it shows many flashes of the truly great writer I believe Bawden became. Great 1950's atmosphere.

Read the full review here http://heavenali.wordpress.com/2014/0...

[Verity W · Rating 4 out of 5]

When Will gets a phone call from the wife of an old school friend to come and help her, he finds himself drawn into a rather seedy potential scandal. A young woman called Rose has come to call on Celia and says she is pregnant, and the father is Celia's husband Humphrey. Celia wants Will firstly to deal with the visit, but then because he's a lawyer to try and handle the situation for them. The Odd Flamingo of the title is a seedy club where Will and Humphrey both used to visit when they were younger, but where Humphrey it seems is still a habitue. Will's staid life is soon caught up in potential murder and blackmail as he tries to work out what is going on.

Nina Bawden is probably most famous for her World War Two set children's novel, Carrie's War. This is from the very start of her career - her second published novel which originally was published in 1954, twenty or so years before Carrie's War. But you can see the shadows of her later work in it, even though the audiences are so different. It's got plenty of twists and turns and it keeps you turning the pages. The portrayal of the London underworld is really atmospheric and there isn't really a sympathetic character among any of them, which I liked about it but may frustrate others. I really enjoyed it - I raced through it to see how it all turned out and which particular awful person was going to be responsible for it all.

[Sue Foster · Rating 2 out of 5]

For me there was no character that I could find any empathy for.
The narrator was pompous and judgmental in how he looked at people
The so called innocent friend came over as horrible person he cheated on his wife. then was ready to call the girl a liar until his letters were brought to light.
he lied to the police and thought nothing of it.
In the end running away to Glasgow to live.
Do yourself a favour and give this book a miss.

[Neer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay. More here: https://ahotcupofpleasureagain.wordpr...

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite a different approach to a mystery. We really enjoyed it. A good page turner with convincing characters. Definitely would recommend it!

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5⭐️ First published in 1954 and republished as part of the British Library Crime Classics Series The Odd Flamingo is a nightclub in the depths of London. It attracts a spurious clientele across the class divide ranging from the upper professional class to the seedy underworld gangster of London’’s crime world. Will Hunt is a solicitor who was a member of the Odd Flamingo in his youth when he visited with his dear friend Humphrey Stone. Both men are now middle aged with successful careers, Humphrey as a headteacher of a public school where he lives with his wife Celia and their children. As the book opens the respectable bubble around Humphrey Stone is suddenly burst when a young woman, Rose Blacker, visits Celia and tells her she is pregnant with Humphrey’s child and offers handwritten letters as proof of their affair. Distraught, Celia calls Will and asks him to help and Will finds himself back in the Odd Flamingo becoming reacquainted with its less than salubrious members. Before Will has any real success things take a nasty turn when Rose’s mother approaches Will to tell him her daughter is now missing, and then a young woman’s murdered body is pulled from a canal in Little Venice, all areas where Rose, her friends, and Humphrey have recently been and Humphrey becomes the prime suspect in her murder.

Against his better judgement Will continues to help both Humphrey and Mrs Blacker and introduces to the reader a selection of characters that are incredibly well drawn and developed some of whom are physically beautiful and others (looking at you Piers Stone) are grotesque in their over indulgence, with the exception of Will and Celia none are attractive personalities with the attractiveness varying by considerable degrees and all have secrets they wish to hide.

Although set at the height of summer, I felt while reading this I was in a permanent twilight and darkness, an accurate recreation of that underground world of dim lighting in basements, of squalid houses and dingy streets. Then there was the darkness of the crimes and the hidden depths and the shady characters involved, as a reader I felt really pulled into that world where people can be anything they want to be because there is little light to expose their true natures. Nina Bawden’s writing was incredibly successful at creating a world of suspense, as I moved through the novel new twists and unexpected turns emerged from the gloom and by the end I began to feel that Will had an impossible task in trying to discover any kind of truth amongst the deceit.

I loved this novel, it’s a inspired piece of writing that doesn’t let the reader rest, but moves at a pace making the reader look one way and then throwing up a some sudden twists that move the narrative off into a very different direction and ends with a very satisfying but unexpected finale.

[Jo · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was OK, but didn't really hold my attention until the end.

[Bine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe it’s just me but I was surprised to learn that the author of Carrie’s War and Peppermint Pig started out writing crime fiction in the 1950s.

The Odd Flamingo was recently re-published in the British Library Crime Classics series and I was very curious about it. I should start with saying that I didn’t read her children’s books as a kid myself and only read Carrie’s War last yea. I enjoyed C’s War but I am sure that I would have loved it more as a child and can see why she is so beloved by many.

Reading The Odd Flamingo made me muse about what might have happened if she would have stuck to the crime genre or maybe written both genres alongside each other.

What’s it about?

Will Hunt gets asked to come over to his friend Celia Stone urgently. She is very upset as a young woman named Rose has just turned up on her doorstep and claims to be pregnant by Celia’s husband Humphrey. Will is not only a friend to the couple but also a solicitor and promises to look into it. But first he needs to find Humphrey who is away for a few days and suddenly he finds himself back at The Odd Flamingo, a shady nightclub in Chelsea which he hadn’t visited in years.

It’s a twisty story where I couldn’t tell what was going to happen. I liked how NB set up the scenes and kept me wondering. I didn’t entirely took to the story and this is solely because I usually need to REALLY like at least one character in a story (often it is the detective but it can also be another character) and in this case I didn’t feel a stronger connection to Will (he came closest to get my sympathies). But this doesn’t mean that I didn’t like the story. It kept my attention well and left me musing about Nina Bawden herself - especially after I read the fab introduction by Martin Edwards. And I would love it if the British Library would add her other crime novel ‘Who calls the tune?’ to this series.