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Don't Leave Me This Way
Don't Leave Me This Way
Don't Leave Me This Way
Ebook284 pages4 hours

Don't Leave Me This Way

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Loretta Lawson is not overjoyed when an old acquaintance, Sandra, turns up knocking on Loretta's doorstep on Christmas Eve. After a week of wrecking havock on Loretta's content, quiet life, Sandra suddenly disappears.

Loretta's relief turns to suspicion when she finds out that Sandra died in a mysterious car crash. As Loretta investigates further, she finds herself dragged into Sandra's messy life and death.

The BBC adaptation of Don't Leave Me This Way stars Imelda Staunton and Bill Nighy.

'Don't Leave Me This Way is the third clever mystery by Joan Smith...a nicely crafted novel with a decidedly feminist twist.' - The Globe and Mail
LanguageEnglish
Release dateDec 1, 2011
ISBN9781448207879
Don't Leave Me This Way
Author

Joan Smith

Joan Alison Smith (born 27 August 1953, London) is an English novelist, journalist and human rights activist, who is a former chair of the Writers in Prison committee in the English section of International PEN. Smith was educated at a state school before reading Latin at the University of Reading in the early 1970s. After a spell as a journalist in local radio in Manchester, she joined the staff of the Sunday Times in 1979 and stayed at the newspaper until 1984. She has had a regular column in the Guardian Weekend supplement, also freelancing for the newspaper and in recent years has contributed to The Independent, the Independent on Sunday, and the New Statesman. In her non-fiction Smith displays a commitment to atheism, feminism and republicanism; she has travelled extensively and this is reflected in her articles. In 2003 she was offered the MBE for her services to PEN, but refused the award. She is a supporter of the political organisation, Republic and an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society. In November 2011 she gave evidence to the Leveson Inquiry into press and media standards following the telephone hacking practiced by the News of the World. She testified that she considered celebrities thought they could control press content if they put themselves into the public domain when, in reality the opposite was more likely. She repeated a claim that she has persistently adhered to in her writings that the press is misogynistic.

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Dr Loretta Lawson is a successful academic, teaching English literature at one of the colleges making up the University of London in the late 1980s. She is also a founding member of Fem Sap, an academic European journal that had been set up to espouse radical feminism. It was in this latter capacity that a few years previously she had met Sandra Neil, who had been a relatively inactive member of the group for a brief period a few years before the novel opens. As they had had no contact in the intervening period, Loretta is very surprised to receive a phone call from Sandra on Christmas Eve, and even more so to find her begging to come and stay in Loretta’s flat for a few days, following a plumbing disaster in her own home.Caught on the hope, Loretta reluctantly accedes to this plea, and Sandra duly moves in, strewing a fair amount of mayhem and disruption in her wake. The new presence in her small apartment quickly comes to grate on Loretta, and she begins to steel herself to confronting Sandra and asking her to move on. This proves unnecessary as Sandra disappears on New Year’s Eve, although she leaves her luggage behind. It is a few days before Loretta discovers that Sandra is dead, having been involved in a car accident in Hampshire. Feeling remorseful in retrospect over her lack of patience, she attends the coroner’s inquest with a view to meeting Sandra’s husband (from whom she had been led to believe that Sandra was completely estranged, although that oddly proves not to be the case), and handing over the luggage which is still in her possession. While there she meets the local police inspector who has been handling the accident, and realises that things are not entirely as they seem.One of the charms of the Loretta Lawson novels is their deep-rooted plausibility. Dr Lawson is far from flawless, and despite her academic success, she is not infallible in her assumptions. She is, however, very resourceful, and prepared to revisit her own inferences as new evidence emerges. Joan Smith manages her plots deftly. The story progresses in perfectly reasonable steps, and there are no flashes of inspiration. She also paints a very realistic picture of the life of an academic. Much of Loretta’s day is passed in the same unexciting and bland way that the rest of us experience – she has to balance the trials of domesticity along with the occasional burdens of her job. Her relationships with friends and colleagues are far from perfect, and ebb and flow realistically.While this novel is now about thirty years old, it hasn’t aged too badly. Obviously, none of the characters has a mobile phone, and instantaneous access to the internet might have made Loretta’s investigations a little easier, but the novel stands the test of time.

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Don't Leave Me This Way - Joan Smith

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