A Blues for Shindig [Paperback]

A fantastically gritty read - unputdownable! --Critical Mass

Just in case any teenager or 20-, 30-, 40-, even 50-something for that matter was damn foolish enough to contend it was their generation that invented sex and drugs and rock n roll, Mo Foster s A Blues For Shindig puts the needle on the record to set it straight... Foster s lack of linguistic artifice and obvious affection for her deviant subjects keeps the reader s grubby finger turning the page, each new adventure and episode always well within reach. A Blues For Shindig is a fine testament to youth yours, hers and mine. --Nick Churchill, Arts and Music Journo.

Shindig didn't know it but her reputation with the boys of Soho had been made that day. It was one of those occasions when time had gone into free fall, everyone watched as he arced gracefully through the air and fell to the floor. He was quickly dispatched out into the courtyard. Sharks would discover him soon. The Rendezvous Club is a squalid little gaff off a slippery courtyard. Here, you'll always find a gathering of the 'boys' of Soho. These are men's men; mostly one syllable names: Vic, Stan or Reg, and definitely not how you would expect gangsters to look - no Bogarts or Greenstreets here. From the 'meat rack' in the Dilly to Joe Lyons Corner House at Coventry Street or the Sunset Club on Carnaby Street, it is startling how these places fit in and complement deviant life and villainy. Soho, in the 1950s, was a centre for misfits and petty criminals. Surrounded by this unusual brew of characters, Shindig seems to fit right in. That is until things change for the bosses up west and the powers look to be shifting in Soho's underworld... Jake Arnott meets Nell Dunn in this gritty accolade to Soho and to deviants of every ilk. "Critical Mass" says: A fantastically gritty read - unputdownable!

Being a pathological liar is a prerequisite for any writer (and any politician of course) and having that facility in abundance led Mo Foster from the vivid world of lowlife fifties Soho to the infinitely duller world of teaching creative writing, which purgatory in turn finally drove her to write A Blues for Shindig `To remind me that there is still life out there! I just lost my way!' she says. `I was driven to write this celebration of low life and loving by memories of joys long gone. It might be autobiographical - or not. Memory is not a quantifiable commodity. Enjoy!' Will you believe it? You choose.