One woman, two men, and a decade to remember

Rating: Three Stars

“I was reading a lot of 1920s journalism and a lot of F. Scott Fitgerald novels, stories, and the love-letters he exchanged with Zelda Sayre during their lives together and apart,” says The Jewel Box author Anna Davis. “I'd already written one book, The Shoe Queen, which was set in Paris in the 1920s. My UK and U.S. contracts required me to write another novel by a deadline. This does rather concentrate the mind.”

     “My heroine is a gossip columnist in London and the two men she falls for are both rather influenced by Fitzgerald,” says Davis. “I enjoy writing love stories with lots of secrets and lies woven into an intricate plot.  I hope I've accomplished that here.”

     Anna Davis’ fifth novel, The Jewel Box is set in London in the Roaring ’20s. Grace Rutherford, an advertising copywriter by day, is gossip columnist Diamond Sharp. Her days are slow and boring. Her boss has old-fashioned ideas about women working and doesn’t take her ideas seriously. Her nights as Diamond are fun and fancy free.

     Diamond meets Dexter O'Connell, an American whom she quickly becomes enamored of. They start an affair. But she’s also attracted to John Cramer, another American who she thinks her sister Nancy has feelings for. Diamond tries to focus on Dexter, even though she is more and more attracted to John. Dexter and John are enemies and she wants to know why. Who should she believe? Who does she love?

     Davis takes us back to a decade where life seems glamorous and chic, but actually has as much emotional baggage as life today. Davis paints the Twenties with realism, but when she’s writing Diamond’s newspaper columns there’s the dry humor and wit that you expect from a journalist. Bravo! You’ll enjoy the witty and columns and wonder how the book would have been if she’d written the whole book as a Diamond Sharp column.

     Each character is drawn well with the words Davis chooses. Both Dexter and John have the feel of F. Scott Fitzgerald. She’s captured the essence of Fitzgerald. There are secrets and betrayals between Diamond and her sister Nancy, but there’s also a lot of love between the two. The book includes reader’s club questions and a Q and A with the author at the back.

     What’s next for Davis? “I’m currently working on a novelization of a real-life sensational murder case which took place at the Savoy hotel in July 1923 in the middle of the biggest thunderstorm London has ever known.”

     Anna Davis was born in Broadstairs in Kent, a small seaside town in the south of England. She currently lives in London.  Davis has written five novels. The Shoe Queen is her only other novel to have been released in the United States. 

The Jewel Box by Anna Davis

Trade paperback, 384 pages, Publisher: Pocket (June 2, 2009), Language: English

ISBN: 9781416537366