Five Days of Fog

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What to expect

'My mum always said, a fistful of rings is as good as a knuckleduster'

As the Great Smog falls over London in 1952, Florrie Palmer has a choice to make.

Will she stay with the Cutters, a gang of female criminals who have terrorized London for years and are led by her own mother? Or leave it all behind to make a safer, duller life with the man she loves? And what will she do if she's too crooked to go straight, and too good to go bad?

Over the next five days, Florrie will have to find her own path and the courage to stumble along it - in a fog so thick that she can't see her own feet.

Following the last days of a crumbling female gang in post-war London, this is a story of family, of love, of finding your way, and of deciphering a route through the greyest areas of morality.

Read by Clare Corbett
(p) Orion Publishing Group 2018

Critics Review

Questions of legacy, loyalty and the freedom to determine your own path combine with a propulsive plot in which dank, bombed-out London becomes its own malign character. Think Patrick Hamilton meets Peaky Blinders with a feminist twist.
Metro
Baby, it's cold outside and there is literally no better book to curl up with than Five Days Of Fog ... An atmospheric and gripping story ... Utterly transporting, read and lose yourself completely.
Stylist
Inspired by the real events of the Great Smog, and providing a fascinating insight into the culture of early girl gangs, this is a pacey tale is full of menace and gritty glamour.
Sunday Mirror
The London fog becomes as potent a presence as any of the characters in a lively story of divided loyalties
The Sunday Times
With a tough, likable protagonist, this is a fascinating and very readable slice of social history, as well as an evocative portrait of a clannish and dangerous world
Guardian
Thoroughly at home with her material, the author enjoys herself with her sharply realised cast of characters in her pacy, sometimes brutal, but entertaining novel.
Daily Mail
Fog descends on a London just out of wartime, a leadership feud stirs disquiet in a gang of female thieves, and the girl who might inherit the bloody crown falls in love with a good boy. But will she be allowed to walk away, or do all women who stand up for themselves have a price to pay? A cinematic, rogueish, and utterly entertaining page-turner by the queen of feisty historical women. Goes down in one jewel-fisted slug.
Abigail Tarttelin, author of DEAD GIRLS
Freeman is excellent on the grim and violent realities of a life of crime and the queasy moral choices that its followers make. Her gripping novel is suffused with an atmosphere of menace as thick as the London smog of 1952 in which it is set.
Mail on Sunday
A gripping, greasy, gritty thriller. You'll be able to taste the fog in the back of your throat.
Red magazine
A brilliant, bold and unforgettable debut. Freeman transports us to a history we'd never have imagined and makes it viscerally real
Nathan Filer on THE FAIR FIGHT
A hugely exciting and entertaining novel, written with warmth, charm, authority and, above all, terrific flair. I loved it
Sarah Waters, on THE FAIR FIGHT
Anna Freeman's familiarity with this rough and raunchy period of history and her wonderfully imagined cast of characters, often down but never out, makes this a brilliant debut novel
THE TIMES on THE FAIR FIGHT
Cracking . . . a lively, rambunctious read
SUNDAY EXPRESS on THE FAIR FIGHT
An exceptional work of historical fiction
NetGalley
Based on the real-life, all-female gang, the Forty Elephants, FIVE DAYS OF FOG is told with verve and style
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