{"id":11408,"date":"2025-03-31T08:17:35","date_gmt":"2025-03-31T12:17:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=11408"},"modified":"2025-03-31T08:17:35","modified_gmt":"2025-03-31T12:17:35","slug":"queen-of-diamonds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=11408","title":{"rendered":"Queen of Diamonds"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This is the third in Beezy Marsh\u2019s trilogy inspired by a real-life female shoplifting gang that operated in London in the first half of the twentieth century. The first two books, Queen of Thieves and Queen of Clubs, deal with the gang\u2019s activities during their heyday in the 1940s and 1950s, while this book describes how their leader\u2014Alice Diamond\u2014got her dubious start two decades earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alice, the future Queen of Diamonds, is an orphan working long hot hours in Pink\u2019s Jam Factory. Aspiring to a better life, she shoplifts little indulgences for herself on her off-hours\u2014silk stockings, colorful scarves, and the like. Alice\u2019s story is interspersed with that of Mary Carr, another legendary leader of a real-life shoplifting gang whose career began several decades earlier. Mary grew up in one of London\u2019s most notorious slums, Seven Dials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Marsh\u2019s story, Mary is noticed by a Mayfair lady out slumming. She\u2019s looking for subjects for her paintings of dirty, downtrodden, poverty-stricken children and finds Mary a perfect model for her art. By inviting the girl to her home and studio, the condescending Lady Harcourt exposes Mary to a completely different side of life, whetting her appetite for better things. Mary soon realizes she\u2019s treated completely differently when she\u2019s wearing Lady Harcourt\u2019s daughter\u2019s hand-me-downs than when dressed in her own dirty rags. From that point, there\u2019s no going back for her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Author Marsh evokes sympathy with her descriptions of the women’s sordid living conditions and unambitious, resentful family members. It isn\u2019t surprising they aspire to glamour beyond the understanding of the people they grew up with. What\u2019s remarkable is that both Mary and Alice are brash and determined enough to get it, with potential trouble with the authorities always right around the corner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All that is fairly sociological. What about the story? It never flags and rests on the tremendous strength of the characters Marsh has created. She puts us right there, fingering those silks, decorating those bonnets, and running for our lives when the coppers appear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the third in Beezy Marsh\u2019s trilogy inspired by a real-life female shoplifting gang that operated in London in the first half of the twentieth century. The first two books, Queen of Thieves and Queen of Clubs, deal with … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,1288,54,266,126],"tags":[451,333],"class_list":["post-11408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-culture","category-detective","category-history","category-reading-2","tag-female-protagonist","tag-london"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2Y0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11408"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11410,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11408\/revisions\/11410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}