The Millionaire Waltz
The novel is set in the London of 1924 to 1926. Scion of a distinguished family, Edie Greenlaw, having driven ambulances during the Great War, has chosen to pursue a career on the stage. She accepts a marriage proposal from her long-time love, David Benton-Launer, a handsome war hero and only son of a wealthy family. Under pressure from David’s family, Edie begins to feel that marriage might prove incompatible with her theatrical ambitions and independence. At the same time her friendships in the theatre see her drawn into a shady world of blackmail and violence against homosexuals.
Quinn deftly juggles the blackmail plot with the story of Edie’s romance. A theatre critic himself, he brilliantly evokes the world of the theatre between the wars. And Edie is a fascinating character. As a new woman whose horizons have expanded since the war, she is fully rounded and wonderfully engaging, and I really felt for her in the painful dilemma at the heart of the novel. The jeopardy in the plot takes a while to make an appearance, but I was nevertheless fully engrossed in the world Quinn creates and the characters who inhabit it. There isn’t that atmosphere of shock and loss that often permeates post- Great War novels such as the work of Elizabeth Speller or Jacqueline Winspear, but I liked it nonetheless. The novel perfectly captures the glamour of the art deco era so far as the upper classes are concerned, but it is a glamour rooted in an earthy reality that becomes apparent as the plot develops. And it is beautifully written. I loved the description of two upper class Englishmen talking as ‘a duel of clams’. Likewise, the sly reference to a meeting with Noel Coward as a ‘brief encounter.’
