COBBLESTONE HEROES
By Ken McCoy
Piatkus  - 1999
ISBN 07499-05042
Fiction / Historical Saga

Reviewed by: Rachel Hyde, MyShelf.Com
Buy a UK Copy

I am definitely not a saga fan so I opened this tale of life in Leeds during the Second World War with a feeling of boredom.  It didn’t last long though and I confess to being sorry to put it down.  This is no tepid love story fleshed out with snatches of potted history and plenty of gloom and grime but a faster paced tale of how the war affects the life of three children and the adventures they have together with their aunt.  There is more than one murder and so much going on that for once I wasn’t wishing the author had written about life at the front.  It is true that the tale is full of heightened drama and some of it is a little far-fetched but the story is well grounded and those streets of terraced houses full of lively children reading The Beano and playing football came to life.  Too often I have found with this type of novel the details are lacking – what people actually did from day to day apart from work, suffer hardships and fall in love.  So we have the minutiae of life here as well as the larger events and it all fits together very neatly and is exactly the right length. 

Jewels, bombs, murders, prisons, romance, disappearing orphans… Catherine Cookson never had all this!  A saga for those who don’t like sagas – or for anybody who enjoys a good novel.

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