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London Bridges
Jane Stevenson's collection of novellas, SEVERAL DECEPTIONS, was one of the critical successes of 1999 - here is a gossipy, smart, critical intellectual, high spirited and literate voice, (TLS) If Stevenson never writes another word, she is already more than promising (SUNDAY TIMES), There is a sense that here we have only seen oen angle of her considerable talent (OBSERVER). LONDON BRIDGES, Stevensons first novel, evokes the mood and sheer enjoyability of classic English detective fiction, though it is set in the London of the 1990s. A young lawyer comes across a treasure lost in the Blitz, and is tempted into a series of crimes which end eventually in murder. Meanwhile, a very contemporary cast of characters assembles to confound him. The denouement of the intricate plot occurs in the Cotswolds, and invloves teddy bears, Greek monks, New Age Bikers and the source of the Thames, and the scintillating wit and intelligence that distinguished SEVERAL DECEPTIONS.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 2000
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78 people want to read
About the author
Jane Stevenson
50 books24 followersDr. Jane Stevenson (born 1959) is a UK author who was born in London and brought up in London, Beijing and Bonn. She has lectured in history at Sheffield University, and teaches literature and history at the University of Aberdeen. Her fiction books include Several Deceptions, a collection of four novellas; a novel, London Bridges; and the historical trilogy made up of the novels The Winter Queen, The Shadow King, and The Empress of the Last Days. Stevenson lives in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.
Her academic publications include Women Latin Poets (Oxford University Press), Early Modern Women Poets with Peter Davidson (Oxford University Press) and The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby, co-edited with Peter Davidson (Prospect Books).
Her academic publications include Women Latin Poets (Oxford University Press), Early Modern Women Poets with Peter Davidson (Oxford University Press) and The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby, co-edited with Peter Davidson (Prospect Books).
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
April 10, 2010
eh. this book proves that we must always read the back of books before buying them, and not just be transfixed by reflective silver surfaces. i bought this years and years ago and decided to finally read it. and for some reason, even after a casual remembering-glance at the back cover copy, stubbornly mentally insisted it was victorian. a nice victorian suspense-y thing, thought i. it actually takes place in the 90's. the 1990's. so it was jarring at first, and then there's an exhausting amount of detail involving impenetrable (to me) english estate law, which i just said blah-di-blah to and carried on... it's fine, but not great. if you are a londoner, it might be more enjoyable to you, because of all the descriptions of location and a subtext which i'm sure i didn't appreciate fully, having been in london a total of 2 days. in the 1990's.
April 21, 2011
I thought this book was going to be a mystery, and it borders on being one, however as someone else pointed out it crosses genres and was much more. The story is very engaging, and the plot moves quickly, much as a thriller does. But this is no thriller. It is witty and funny in places -- I laughed out loud several times while reading it. It is intelligent, which is a refreshing change from so many authors today. Plus the characters are well-developed so you start caring about them. And it has a sense of place. I can think of very few "mysteries" I would say all that about. It most reminds me of my favorite mystery writer, Donna Leon, and that says quite a lot. I thoroughly enjoyed the story (which others have outlined and I will not repeat) and hated when it ended. I recommend it highly!
April 18, 2012
Janine is a graduate student of European studies whose part-time job as a Mayfair pharmacy assistant leads to her to a murder. Scholar and eccentric Sebastian's accidental friendship with an elderly gentleman brings him unknowingly into the scheme involving a devious Greek business woman, a corrupt young lawyer and an ancient and stupendously valuable plot of land south of the Thames. Various colorful friends and colleagues add spice to the intricate plot, but the star of this thrilling and quirkily humorous novel is London itself. The climax involves modern-day Druids on Harleys in a hair-raising chase through the idyllic Cotswolds countryside. A brilliant and atmospheric story by a gifted writer, London Bridges and its warm and witty characters will live in your memory long after you've finished reading.
May 30, 2009
I don't generally have any patience with contemporary fiction, and although this is something of a mystery, it's only lightly so. I was surpriesed by how very much I enjoyed it. Part of that was, of course, the evocation of London--I have met or seen most of these characters, and the sense of place is considerable. Nevertheless, it was sufficiently well written that I finished with great enjoyment. I doubt that I'll read it again, but that's not a requirement for a high rating. It did suffer from an unnecessary and infuriating last chapter, in which The Message Of The Book was discussed, in (metaphorical) capital letters and short words, by all of the characters, in case anyone had missed it. Since it was fairly heavy-handed to begin with, I was deeply annoyed by this final chapter.
August 9, 2011
Such an interesting and funny novel. Why isn't it better known?
March 22, 2023
I think that this novel might well be described as a ‘romp’.
While set in contemporary London (well, almost contemporary, having been written in the dawn of the current century), it takes in a seventeenth century Greek church, historic sites around London and an ancient Greek manuscript. The contemporary aspects lie in the machinations of an ambitious and avaricious young lawyer who sees an opportunity to sequester a considerable fortune, aided and abetted by a pair of opportunistic Greeks, while the forces for good are represented by a capable and confident scholar assisted by an Australian woman financing her travails as a mature student by evening shifts in a central London pharmacy.
London itself plays a central role, with different parts of the city being rendered in affectionate detail. At times I was reminded of the opening scenes of J B Priestley’s Angel Pavement, while at others the book evoked Dickens. There are a couple of literary subplots, too.
All in all, it was highly entertaining, although occasionally it veered rather too close to the overly whimsical for my taste.
While set in contemporary London (well, almost contemporary, having been written in the dawn of the current century), it takes in a seventeenth century Greek church, historic sites around London and an ancient Greek manuscript. The contemporary aspects lie in the machinations of an ambitious and avaricious young lawyer who sees an opportunity to sequester a considerable fortune, aided and abetted by a pair of opportunistic Greeks, while the forces for good are represented by a capable and confident scholar assisted by an Australian woman financing her travails as a mature student by evening shifts in a central London pharmacy.
London itself plays a central role, with different parts of the city being rendered in affectionate detail. At times I was reminded of the opening scenes of J B Priestley’s Angel Pavement, while at others the book evoked Dickens. There are a couple of literary subplots, too.
All in all, it was highly entertaining, although occasionally it veered rather too close to the overly whimsical for my taste.
January 12, 2023
What superb writing--I wish there was another mystery novel of hers.
Want to read
September 29, 2024Jane Casey said so
July 18, 2018
Was not invested in the characters nor the story. Also, the evocation of the city of London was minimal. And the ending “message(s)” were heavy-handed.
March 11, 2017
Intelligently written, well researched, nice prose, good characterizations, although somehow the prose didn't sparkle and I wasn't sure until 100 or so pages in that I was really interested in the story. One of those "serendipity" tales where a number of different characters come to be acquainted with one another and in the end--although their lives are told almost entirely within a narrow area of London--jointly have a brief and very unlikely "adventure" in the Cotswolds that ends in them thwarting one planned murder and landing in jail the murderers of someone else. Lots of factual info, some of which feels forced into the text or is presented too much like a lecture. Nonetheless, I can recommend it.
April 11, 2023
This extremely well-written and entertaining book is a quasi-thriller constructed around an exploration of how people meet and forge their own communities. Set in London, the story is populated by a disparate upper-middle class cast of professionals who are entwined in a plot revolving around some valuable South Bank real estate owned by a Greek monastery. Events are set in motion when two different groups discover the existence of the property, as well as the possibility of the existence of priceless antiques in a safe-deposit box. The story opens with a prologue out of chronological order that foreshadows events to come. Then the reader is taken back a few weeks to meet the villain of the piece, a snobby but poor lawyer who is given the task of wrapping up the affairs of an estate that puts him in contact with the South Bank property and forgotten relics. It also puts him in touch with a cunning Greek businesswoman, and the two convince each other that they might be able to get their hands on these precious items by conning an elderly Anglo-Greek banking agent into assigning the lawyer power of attorney.
Meanwhile (a phrase much used in the book), an enthusiastic preservationist has discovered an old fountain and thinks the South Bank property (currently an ad hoc community garden) is just the place for it. He's comes up with the grand scheme to get the monastery to donate the land for the project, and ropes in his friend Hattie, who works for a foundation (trust in the UK) dedicated to the nebulous task of improving London. She brings on board her friend who is a campy gay classics professor who just happens to know the abbot of the monastery. It all gets rather complicated to explain, but soon these characters all start to cross paths, along with an Australian graduate student in the classics program who moonlights as a pharmacist, an Indian lawyer born and bred in London who works at the villain's firm, and various other minor characters. These are all well-drawn figures that occasionally border on cliché at times, but whenever we see them at work or at home, they are always doing things that give them depth and life, and Stevenson shows a nice ear for dialogue. Of course, everything is pretty much constrained to the well-meaning striving set of law, academia, trusts, art, and so on, but it's still well done.
The story walks that fine line of being literate without becoming pretentious. The "thriller" aspect almost borders on a Scooby-Doo story where the gang starts to put the puzzle together, but a murder keeps things dark enough to avoid tounge-in-cheekitis. There is comedy and wit, and the climax is perhaps a bit over-the-top in the wackiness, but Stevenson makes it work nonetheless. The plot does require one to go along with a heavy dose of coincidence in terms of these people all knowing each other, but if one can get past that, it's vastly entertaining stuff. The book also mainly succeeds as a slice of London life that is a homage to the bonds of friendship. There is perhaps a little too much detail of what people wear and their home decor, but its all within context. Of course, it helps if one is predisposed to books about London and Londoners, but it should appeal to metropolitan dwellers anywhere. A thoroughly fun book that will have me seeking out more of Stevenson's works.
Meanwhile (a phrase much used in the book), an enthusiastic preservationist has discovered an old fountain and thinks the South Bank property (currently an ad hoc community garden) is just the place for it. He's comes up with the grand scheme to get the monastery to donate the land for the project, and ropes in his friend Hattie, who works for a foundation (trust in the UK) dedicated to the nebulous task of improving London. She brings on board her friend who is a campy gay classics professor who just happens to know the abbot of the monastery. It all gets rather complicated to explain, but soon these characters all start to cross paths, along with an Australian graduate student in the classics program who moonlights as a pharmacist, an Indian lawyer born and bred in London who works at the villain's firm, and various other minor characters. These are all well-drawn figures that occasionally border on cliché at times, but whenever we see them at work or at home, they are always doing things that give them depth and life, and Stevenson shows a nice ear for dialogue. Of course, everything is pretty much constrained to the well-meaning striving set of law, academia, trusts, art, and so on, but it's still well done.
The story walks that fine line of being literate without becoming pretentious. The "thriller" aspect almost borders on a Scooby-Doo story where the gang starts to put the puzzle together, but a murder keeps things dark enough to avoid tounge-in-cheekitis. There is comedy and wit, and the climax is perhaps a bit over-the-top in the wackiness, but Stevenson makes it work nonetheless. The plot does require one to go along with a heavy dose of coincidence in terms of these people all knowing each other, but if one can get past that, it's vastly entertaining stuff. The book also mainly succeeds as a slice of London life that is a homage to the bonds of friendship. There is perhaps a little too much detail of what people wear and their home decor, but its all within context. Of course, it helps if one is predisposed to books about London and Londoners, but it should appeal to metropolitan dwellers anywhere. A thoroughly fun book that will have me seeking out more of Stevenson's works.
February 21, 2013
Originally published on my blog here in May 2005.
Margery Allingham's classic novels are generally set in the most rural parts of Essex and Suffolk or in London. The latter had a particular atmosphere which is more or less gone from the genre: she specialised in eccentric faded gentility. Perhaps there is less of this about than there was in the thirties, and even thoguh there is still a great deal of crime fiction being set in England's capital, it is dominated by the police procedural. In Allingham, this air of eccentricity extended even into the police force - which brings me to the most obvious connection between her work and London Bridges. In one of her later novels, The China Governess, her policeman Luke becomes the father of a baby girl, who is mentioned in passing. Hattie Luke, now grown up, is one of the main characters in this novel, acting as a catalyst for the story.
The structure of London Bridges is simple, but unusual. Basically, the reader knows what is going on and who is responsible, but each major character only knows a piece of it - some isolated, odd, maybe mildly suspicious incident that is easily dismissed as one of the quirky things that happen to an inhabitant of a big city (they're about on a level with the sort of bizarre conversations strangers used to have with me on tube trains when I was a student in London). It is only because Hattie brings them together that one mentions something that strikes a chord with another, and they begin to compare notes.
Of course, this plot device uses something that I frequently object to in crime novels: co-incidence. There are links that might draw these people together (they are all to some extent involved in Greek culture, either academically or through the Greek community in London, or both), but it is still extremely unlikely. However, there is an excuse, in that the co-incidence is the whole point of the novel rather than being used to get over an awkward, poorly thought out, part of the puzzle as is usually the case in the crime genre. There must be crimes which go unnoticed because the people who know bits and pieces are never brought toghether; to do so (once) is an interesting idea for a novel.
London Bridges does not truly belong in the crime fiction genre - I think that not having to puzzle over who commits the murder rules it out. It is much more about character and atmosphere, too, than is usual in the genre, and that is really what makes it worth reading. The atmosphere here (and, indeed, the characters) are reminiscent of Margery Allingham, combined with generous helpings of a writer of the ilk of Iris Murdoch. Altogether, this is an intelligent, fascinating and absorbing read- I wish I'd come across Jane Stevenson five years ago.
Margery Allingham's classic novels are generally set in the most rural parts of Essex and Suffolk or in London. The latter had a particular atmosphere which is more or less gone from the genre: she specialised in eccentric faded gentility. Perhaps there is less of this about than there was in the thirties, and even thoguh there is still a great deal of crime fiction being set in England's capital, it is dominated by the police procedural. In Allingham, this air of eccentricity extended even into the police force - which brings me to the most obvious connection between her work and London Bridges. In one of her later novels, The China Governess, her policeman Luke becomes the father of a baby girl, who is mentioned in passing. Hattie Luke, now grown up, is one of the main characters in this novel, acting as a catalyst for the story.
The structure of London Bridges is simple, but unusual. Basically, the reader knows what is going on and who is responsible, but each major character only knows a piece of it - some isolated, odd, maybe mildly suspicious incident that is easily dismissed as one of the quirky things that happen to an inhabitant of a big city (they're about on a level with the sort of bizarre conversations strangers used to have with me on tube trains when I was a student in London). It is only because Hattie brings them together that one mentions something that strikes a chord with another, and they begin to compare notes.
Of course, this plot device uses something that I frequently object to in crime novels: co-incidence. There are links that might draw these people together (they are all to some extent involved in Greek culture, either academically or through the Greek community in London, or both), but it is still extremely unlikely. However, there is an excuse, in that the co-incidence is the whole point of the novel rather than being used to get over an awkward, poorly thought out, part of the puzzle as is usually the case in the crime genre. There must be crimes which go unnoticed because the people who know bits and pieces are never brought toghether; to do so (once) is an interesting idea for a novel.
London Bridges does not truly belong in the crime fiction genre - I think that not having to puzzle over who commits the murder rules it out. It is much more about character and atmosphere, too, than is usual in the genre, and that is really what makes it worth reading. The atmosphere here (and, indeed, the characters) are reminiscent of Margery Allingham, combined with generous helpings of a writer of the ilk of Iris Murdoch. Altogether, this is an intelligent, fascinating and absorbing read- I wish I'd come across Jane Stevenson five years ago.
Read
April 11, 2012London Bridges has been on my bookshelf, unread, for more than five years. I discovered it there during a move and in moving hell read it while I was too distracted to visit the library. It has been one of the unexpected benefits of the move. Neither a thriller nor a detective novel, it is a gentle story of an inept intrigue and its unintentional exposure with just enough suspense to keep one reading. But the real delight is in its charming and quirky characters who seem to delight in getting to know each other just as much as I enjoyed getting to know them.
December 2, 2012
This book was just the sort of thing I like: set in the UK, includes some academic types, lively goings on. It gets off to a bit of a slow start as a number of key characters must be introduced, but once things are underway and the disparate strands are beginning to tie together, I found it very exciting. The ending was maybe a tad abrupt, but part of the reason I say that is because I love Sebastian, Dil, Janeane and Hattie and would eagerly follow them indefinitely.
June 3, 2016
I thought this book was too simplistic, and the action and characters a bit formulaic. The book's "bad guys" were lacking in definition. Its social commentary (as pertains to gay men and people of ethnicity in the UK) seems outdated but perhaps it wasn't at the time it was written.
All things considered, I did read it all the way through.
All things considered, I did read it all the way through.
August 29, 2012
Really enjoyed the all the characters (except the villainess, who was a bit too cartoon-y). Didn't mind the legalese, but some of the minute details of the British academic system were a bit arcane for a Yank with a BS.
July 7, 2014
I'm immersing myself in books set in London. This one reminded me a bit of Alexander McCall Smith's Isabel Dalhousie books, in that the characters are either clearly good or bad, and there's a final philosophical question at the end. The London setting might have earned this an extra half a star:)
August 24, 2010
Stevenson captures the voice and experience of a generation of thirty-something Brits in this fun novel in which murder, friendship, art history, aspiration and London all figure.
March 24, 2014
Pleasant, clever, and often amusing.
May 29, 2016
Enjoyable. Loved the London setting.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews