The Odd Flamingo

A review of The Odd Flamingo by Nina Bawden – 251002

Nina Bawden is best known as a children’s writer and a novelist, but she cut her writing teeth writing crime fiction. The Odd Flamingo, originally published in 1954 and reissued as part of the British Library Crime Classics series, is a deep dive into the murky demi monde of London in the post war years, a world of nightclubs, spivs, drugs and petty criminals. Caught up it in it all is poor Rose Blacker, beautiful in her own way but having to pay a terrible price for making some poor life choices in an attempt to escape the drudgery of her existence and her domineering parents.

Bawden chooses to have her story narrated by Will Hunt, a lawyer who is a former boyfriend of Celia Stone and a good friend of her husband, Humphrey. He is in some ways an odd choice as narrator as while he is involved in unravelling the mystery, he is less a sleuth than a collector and distiller of information gathered along the way. Initially, he seems somewhat bloodless, detached from the events unfolding around him but e gradually develops an affection for Rose. While the worlds of some of the other characters in the story are destroyed by their association with the nightclub that is The Odd Flamingo, Will seems the most affected, losing faith in the friends he once respected and in a way his own innocence. His association with the nightclub will scar him for life.

Celia turns to Will in a panic as Rose has appeared on her door claiming to be pregnant from an association with Humphrey, up to that point a respectable headmaster. To substantiate her claim, Rose is able to produce half a dozen letters written to her by Humphrey at the height of their passionate affair. As Humphrey is away in London at a conference, Will agrees to try and find him and get nearer to the truth. Will quickly realizes that Humphrey is no longer the man that he once admired.

All roads seem to lead to The Odd Flamingo, a club which both Will and Humphrey discovered in their Oxford days, a “dreadful place”, according to Humphrey’s brother, Piers, “with coarse paintings all over the walls. You’ll probably enjoy it. Provincials do. They think it is Bohemia”. The tawdry side of Bohemia perhaps, as it is a stamping ground of drug dealers, runners, and minor gangsters, one of whom is Jimmie Callaghan, under whose sinister influence Rose has fallen.

Rose disappears, a young woman, a friend of hers, Jasmine Castle is found dead, murdered, and then an old man, Mr Menhennet, for the seemingly trifling sum of £30. As the pace of the plot increases, Rose has to be rescued from a life-threatening situation and the eminence grise behind a plot to frame another comes off second best in an encounter with a bus as a thrilling car chase ends.

There is a clever puzzle at the heart of the book which Will and the more sympathetic and grounded Detective Inspector Jennings of the Yard piece together, but for me the strength of the book lies in both its social realism, its willingness to explore social issues which might seem commonplace now but were daring at the time it was written, and the strength of the characters. Although we might have enormous sympathy for Rose and her plight, she is a flawed character, capable of plunging to the depths of the moral abyss when it suits her or when she is influenced by someone she is keen to impress.        

There is a very dark feel about the book with little in the way of hope or optimism, life with all its warts and wrinkles. Nevertheless, it is a very absorbing read and is a welcome addition to the canons of an impressive series.