Contemporary
On the steps of an East End cinema in the 1950’s two friends made each other a promise. But as the boys grow up, they grow apart. Their lives take different paths.
On the steps of an East End cinema in the 1950’s two friends made each other a promise. But as the boys grow up, they grow apart. Their lives take different paths. Jack follows a service career with the RAF, and after demobilisation works as a journalist for a local newspaper in Essex. He makes his home on a beautiful old boat moored on the river. Russ becomes a highly successful property developer in London. Decades later, after fifty years of estrangement, the tranquillity Jack has found beside his beloved river is shattered by a hand delivered letter from Russ.
Step by calculated step, through cajoling, threats and tugging at Jack’s sympathy, Russ lures Jack back into his life. In the process, we discover that Jack has deep secrets he does not want to be exposed. Russ seems to know everything, and his silence is something for which Jack must pay a high price.
Set-in two-time periods, immediately post WW2 and the 2000’s, and two locations, war damaged East London and the flatlands of the East Anglian coastline, Dancing to Domino examines the nature of friendship and whether a promise can expire over time. And how far anyone should be expected to go to honour it.
David’s first published book, Impeccable Sources was published in 2007 and is available to buy through Amazon.
Here's what readers have to say about this book....
Check this out! Set in latter-day Suffolk and the East End of the 50's we meet Jack who's looking for a quiet retired life on his boat, enjoying fishing, walks with his girlfriend Alison and a few beers early evening in his local when the dream is suddenly shattered. He hears from an old friend from the past and is relentlessly pursued and pushed to meet up. When eventually he does he's asked to do the unthinkable. I couldn't put this book down and just had to know the outcome!
This is a compelling tale for anyone who grew up immediately post WW2 in the immediate post war years and escape from London to create a new way of life sailing and life on board a barge on an East coast rivers. Many promises made to friends in that time were fulfilled but this was about a a promise that might bring with it a compulsion to kill. A fascinating look at life and friendships.
Dancing to Domino, David Brewerton's second novel is an excellent read with a well constructed story of two boyhood friends who grew up in East London in the post-war years. The narrative moves smoothly between the boy's early years and the present day in which Jack, the main protagonist, is a 70-something man with a love of boats living on the Norfolk Broads, an area and a subject Brewerton clearly knows well. Dancing to Domino holds the reader's interest from first to last and is a rewarding read with well drawn characters.
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