The Widow Ginger

Book excerpt: It is 1954, the year Roger Bannister won the four-minute mile. Rosie, and her beloved Auntie Maggie are opening up their caf� in Old Compton Street for Uncle Bert's breakfast special when the Widow Ginger comes to call. The Widow Ginger, an ex-GI with ice-cold blue eyes, is especially scary. He has unfinished business with Uncle Bert - business that includes being cheated on his share of a 'liberated' lorry-load of guns and explosives during the War - and he intends to make sure he now gets paid in full. And this isn't all: the lovely Luigi appears to be suffering from a severe case of unrequited lust; Bert and the local Mafioso Maltese Joe have had an acrimonious falling-out; and, most worrying of all, Rosie's best friend Jenny has begun to keel over mysteriously in the school playground. With a cast of colourful characters with wonderful names like Sugar Plum Flaherty and Bandy Bunion, Soho streets so authentic you can lean out and touch them, and a story that will make you laugh and cry, The Widow Ginger is another heart-warming novel that will establish Pip as the queen of London saga-writers.