Amazon.co.uk Review
Too many "family-of" accounts of English gangster life are as dodgy as the deals they luridly describe.
Dead Men's Wages, Lilian Pizzichini's superb reconstruction of her shady grandfather Charlie Taylor's niche in the London criminal underworld, stands apart as a restorative pick through the family rubble. On the day that she was born in 1965, Miss World had just left her grandfather for Bob Hope. Such decadence, however, was illusory: behind the extravagance lay an existence rooted in humble beginnings only ameliorated by fraud, gambling and deceit. Indeed, the book's title refers to a centuries-old scam perpetuated by Charlie, who claimed the earnings of non-existent workers, using the National Insurance numbers of dead soldiers from the Second World War. This bamboozling was also the premise of Nikolai Gogol's
Dead Souls, and while it's unlikely Charlie found much recourse to literature, his granddaughter writes with the cold anger and novelistic eloquence of the emotionally dispossessed.
Her account scratches the palimpsest of London history, recalling the Fascist rallies of the 1930s, the rise of hoodlums like Billy Hill and the Krays, the emergence of drug commerce, and the increasing concomitance of the criminal, show business and patriarchal classes. Finally arrested on charges of conspiracy to forge gold coins, Charlie, now plain old Alfred, his birth name, was acquitted of all charges posthumously, as he had expired on the platform at Waterloo Station. Integral also to Pizzichini's assimilated narrative is the rise and sprawl of the London suburbs, particularly to the north west of the capital, in a complementary vein to Edward Platt's Leadville, the expansion of which provided the rich pickings for Charlie and his ilk could make through the building industry. There are few pleasant folk in Pizzichini's haunted tale, yet her familial grave-robbing deglamorises and debunks with hard-fought zeal, rendering inherited mythologies in stark relief. Amoral conman to the last, Charlie instructed his son to "knock the undertakers" for his funeral. Pizzichini's epitaph, though, is damning, and final: "You see, Charlie, ultimately, no-one cared enough. We were tired of your depravity". --David Vincent
Review
This is a patchwork of historical and anecdotal incidents pivoting on the life and times of conman and career criminal Charlie Taylor, written by his granddaughter. Borstal boy, reluctant conscript and constant deserter, Charlie Taylor was born into appalling poverty in the early years of the 20th century. The 18th child of an aggrieved and careworn mother and a drunken labourer of a father, Charlie was the runt of the litter, but he never let that stop him from clawing his way to the top of the heap. Where his brothers used brute force, Charlie used guile and rakish charm. From working dodges on building sites and stealing anything that wasn't nailed down to hobnobbing with actors and royalty in the swinging '60s, Charlie achieved notoriety as the top man in his dubious profession. A driven, calculating and amoral individual, Charlie ruled his family as he ruled his mob, with a rod of iron. By the time the book's author came to know him, his power was on the wane, but Charlie was never one to give up without a fight. To his dying breath he remained true to his own warped creed, oblivious to the fact that many of his own family breathed a sigh of relief at his passing. Pizzichini charts the social and architectural development of London during the lifetime of one man, born with nothing and little hope of betterment or redemption. There are no winners or losers here, no charismatic charmers with a heart of gold, just hardship, need and the burning desire to do unto others before they do it to you. Charlie's breathtaking lack of morals or conscience will give you pause even if it fascinates and beguiles you. A thoroughly seamy perspective on a century that we all presume to know so well. (Kirkus UK)
