This grim but gripping tale of postwar female crime gangs is a low-key belter! The use of the fog metaphor is compelling - it is inescapable, oppressive, all-pervasive and smotheringly claustrophobic just like the life that Florrie is unwillingly destined for and, like the fog, she can see no way out of it. The tension is palpable, the characters are authentic and fascinating and the writing is quietly glorious. Such a fun read.

‘Five Days of Fog’ by Anna Freeman about the queen of a female crime syndicate coming out of prison reminds me of Martina Cole’s books. It is 1952 and as Florrie Palmer waits for her mother Ruby to return home, she must make a decision about the direction of her own life. London remains in the grip of ruins from the war and Florrie is firmly embedded in the family gang, donning disguises to steal, feeling secure in the circle of women who support each other. But she also applies for a job as a telephonist, carefully practising her accent.
The action is framed by five days of fog, both physical and perceived. So dense is visibility that cars crash, chemicals cause lung infections and people are coughing up dirt. The fog offers opportunities for thieves but it also disguises the truth and lies told to each other by the gang as they face a turning point. Old lies are perpetuated, new lies told with a smile, some members are out for their own benefit; others are tired of the secrets and politicking, and just want to get back to what they do best. Freeman’s fog is based on the real Great Smog of 1952 when an anticyclone pushed down all the filth in the air from industry, motor vehicle fumes and smoke from coal fires; it was followed in 1956 by the Clean Air Act.
The Palmer women form the Cutters, a fictional women’s gang named for The New Cut, a London market where the first group of women, tired of poverty and scrubbing floors, started shoplifting. When queen Ruby comes out of jail on early release, she has TB. As jostling begins in anticipation of the crowning of a new queen, there is a potentially bigger problem risking the survival of the Cutters and the male gang, the Goddens [the Palmer girls marry Godden boys, keeping the two gangs linked by DNA]; someone is grassing them up to the police. Trust is fractured, suspicious run rife, knives are carried, somewhere there is a gun. The story is told from multiple viewpoints – Florrie, Ruby, Nell, Ted – possibly too many. Is Florrie the grass? After all, she has dreams of going straight and marrying Nell’s son Ted, her quiet second cousin. If Ruby dies, Florrie will be in line to take over as queen. Or will Ruby’s blustering be-ringed sister Maggie take over? What about Ada, Ruby’s elderly aunt? Or is Harry Godden the queenmaker? Florrie and Ted are drawn into the gang by the family’s tentacles that keep the gang strong, safe and in the family.
I finished this book with mixed feelings. I admire the writing but don’t like any of the women and don’t feel convinced by the world created, though I can’t pin down why. I continued reading through the jumble of family background and names in the first half because I was curious about the identity of the grass. For me, the book took off in the second half as Nell’s story ignites. But the star of this book for me is Freeman’s masterful use of the fog.
If you are a fan of Freeman’s debut, 'The Fair Fight', be prepared for something completely different.
Read more of my book reviews at http://www.sandradanby.com/book-reviews-a-z/

I am currently purchasing books for our secondary school library for our senior students. I am trying to provide a balance of genres and periods and really try and introduce them to a wide range of modern fiction. This book would definitely go down well with a hypercritical teenage audience as it has a bit of everything - great characterisation and a narrative style that draws you in and keeps you reading whilst also making you think about a wide range of issues at the same time. I think that school libraries are definitely changing and that the book we purchase should provide for all tastes and reflect the types of books that the students and staff go on to enjoy after leaving school Five Days of Fog is the kind of book that you can curl up with and totally immerse yourself in and I think it will definitely go down well at my school. I think that it was the perfect blend of page-turning fiction with something for them to really think hard about too. I think it would be a big hit with our seniors and will definitely recommend that we buy a copy as soon as we can.

I wasn't sure if I'd like this from the premise but so glad a took a punt. So atmospheric and quite unlike anything I've read before plot wise. Brilliant.

I found this book to be a fascinating insight into both the life in London during the fog and how the people behaved during this time. Recommended to those interested in these subjects.

Set in 1952 this book covers just 5 days of the time an almighty smog descends on London. Based on the real-life air-pollution event of that year, when an anticyclone pushed down all the smoke and pollution, creating a dangerous and poisonous smog. Severely reducing visibility and harming to health for many.
It follows The Cutter family a gang of criminals living in London. The focus is on the women, all strong and larger than life, living within a family with a strong hierarchy.
Ruby the current head of the gang is due to be released from prison but is in poor health. Her daughter awaits her return, longing to be with her mum again, but struggling with her part within this family of criminals. In love with a second cousin who has either chose to ignore all that goes on or has miraculously avoided it, she is planning her ‘escape’. But no one can ever truly leave and get away with it.

A great story of the extended family of a criminal gang of women living their extraordinary lives. Not only hiding behind the smog but also hiding secrets from each other.

This is a very interesting read. Set in 1950s London, in the great fogs which claimed many lives, it is the tale of a gang of female petty thieves. Florrie is the youngest member but comes from the main family in the gang. She is torn between getting out of the gang and liking the trappings that the thieving brings. The story races along and is violent, sinister and very foggy. I loved it. .

A compulsive read. “Five Days Of Fog” is a vividly told tale of the antics of a female criminal gang during the Great Smog of London. The characters are vibrant and relatable, and the plot unfolds beautifully. Thoroughly enjoyed it! The Author’s Note at the end is extremely interesting, detailing additional resources used in the course of her clearly extensive and meticulous research.

This is an atmospheric evocation of 1950s London. An all female gang of shoplifters appears unstoppable, but there are tensions within the gang. This is all set in five days of fog so dense that it is difficult to see your hand in front of your face.
There has obviously been a lot of research, and I'm sure the background is very authentic. Unfortunately I found it hard to warm to the characters, and so the story felt a little flat.
Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC

Thanks to Orion Publishing Group for this review copy in exchange for honest review.

Anna FReeman is a master of her craft. To make this a unique, eye opening, and action packed novel for a five day period. Loved the characters, the sense of being in the fog it was so well described, and the high fever pitch of suspense.

This was a really good read. It has obviously been well researched and well thought out. The book is quite violent in places but that adds to the plot and sets the atmosphere. There is a lot happening in 5 days. It was fascinating to read how the gangs were run and that there was a lack of trust throughout.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

This book reminded me of Brighton Rock except that most of the characters are female and the setting is 1950s London. The story is about a gang called the Cutters (no guessing why…) who are all about stealing, fighting, protection rackets and family loyalty. During the notorious Great Smog of 1952, power struggles are fought within the gang while their ‘queen’ is in prison. The smog represents the hazy morals of some of the characters and also the disorder of postwar London, but unfortunately for me it also represents the way I felt about the book. Did I like it or not? Were the characters realistic enough? Was the ending unsatisfactory or was it heartwarming? I don’t know. It’s all a bit foggy.

The book is well researched, even down to how people used language at the time, but I think that the author focused on the details of the period at the expense of making us care about the characters. Some of them came across as stock film characters, such as Harry, the womanising spiv, and Cissy, the stereotypical dumb blonde. I kept forgetting the name of the main protagonist – Florrie – because she didn’t seem to have much of a character. As the daughter of Ruby (the leader of the gang) she’s torn between her shady upbringing and the wish to better herself, but I never got a sense of who she really was. I wasn’t keen on the relationship between Florrie and Ted. They’re cousins in their late teens. I don’t know when marrying your cousin stopped being a usual thing in British society, but I’m thinking that the 50s seems a bit late for that? In any case, I don’t see why the author had to have a romance between cousins in this book.

I did like the setting of the story and how it felt to be in the Great Smog. I could imagine this working well as a TV drama. I just think the rest of it didn’t work for me.

This is a wonderfully atmospheric book telling the story of Florrie and her criminal family in 1950's London. Florrie is on the cusp of making a decision; should she stay in the all female gang that her mother runs and enjoy a life of excitement and good times, or should she cut the family ties and settle down to a quiet and honest life with the man that she loves? Very much a character driven book the relationships between the key women in this all female gang are explored and picked apart. No-one and nothing is quite as it seems and the complicated relationships are both fascinating to read about and incredibly realistic.
Add to this is the titular fog which is almost a character in its own right. The insidious way that the fog works its way into everyone's life and impacts on everyone is such a clever way of advancing the story and reflecting the murky underbelly of life in a criminal gang in 1950's London.
This is a fabulous read and I would like to thank the publishers and Net Galley for the advanced copy in return for an honest review.

This was an extraordinarily atmospheric read. And quite violent too, more than I was expecting it to be. But still, a riveting read.

Anna Freeman's Five Days of Fog follows the last days of a female criminal gang in post-war London, in one of the thickest fogs on record. But it's also the story of two families. What it means to belong to a large extended family, and even be 'owned' by them. And what it means to be part of a family that you really don't want to be a part of.

There are so many strong female characters in this novel (which also passes the Bechdel Test by the way). Not just the aggressive ones (I seriously NEVER want to meet Maggie in a well-lit street let alone down a dark alley), but the quiet characters, like Nelly, who manage to stay true to themselves and fight for their family, even if they are seen as weak by the others. And the morality displayed by the characters in this novel is as grey as the fog that surrounds them, nebulous and difficult to grasp. Particularly Flossie, the matriarch's daughter, who wants to be good but is so good at being bad.

I really enjoyed this; the only way I can describe it as a sort of The Krays meets Orange is not the only Black meets Brief Encounter?! And trust me, when I say that this is a good thing.

This book is very much about family dynamics within a rather unusual family. It has a really good ending, and without saying too much all I mean is that it is one of those books that finishes and feels properly finished as it’s wrapped nicely.

The author to a degree has based this book on the Great Smog that descended London in 1952 for four and a half days. This must have been such an oppressive depressing time and the author beautifully brings this across in her descriptive writing.

The author also read a lot of anecdotal accounts, journalism pieces and various other books on the Great Smog together with books on known gangs that operated during this time. These well researched ideas have all come together to produce in my opinion a thoroughly entertaining read.

The story is set in London in 1952 and set around the "real" great smog when London was hit with impenetrable fog for a period of time,

Ruby, the Queen of the Cutters is waiting to get released from Holloway Prison and her daughter Florrie is wanting a different life and she's not sure how her mum will take it. She's got a boy, her second cousin Ted and wants to go on the straight and narrow.

The Cutters, are an all female shoplifting gang with very strong characters including Maggie & Ada, who've shared the same man. The characters and scenes are absolutely captivating - you can imagine yourself there. With the post war houses, WWII bomb sites and cafe's selling stale cakes and weak tea (and dare I say it, out and about with the girls!)

They do get themselves into many a scrape and cousin Nell, who proves herself to be a "Palmer" through and through but not through choice but circumstance. I adored especially Florrie and Nell. An absolute triumph of a book which I adored.

Full of suspense. It makes a change that its females that are in criminal gangs rather than it being males all the time. It's almost who or what's going to win
Thank you to Orion Publishing Group and netgalley from giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my honest unbiased review.

Having heard of the Clean Air Act of 1956 after the London fog of 1952 which may have claimed as many as 12,000 lives, I was immediately drawn to ‘Five Days of Fog’ which focuses on the murky world of the Cutter girls, a well-established gang based on the real-life ‘Forty Elephant’ all-female shoplifting gang of the same period.
Their new ‘queen’ Ruby Palmer has just finished serving time for shoplifting. Florrie, her daughter, reliable cousin Nell and her son Ted have to adjust their daily routines as she takes her place once more at the centre of her family. Whilst Ruby begins her reign, there are clearly power struggles amongst other members of the gang, not least her sister Maggie and aunt Ada. And Uncle Harry, cruel, coercive and utterly immoral looks on, only intervening when it’s necessary to understand who really rules in south London.
Because the novel does exactly what the title suggests – focusing on five days of London fog – there is no complicated or convoluted plot, and that’s a strength of the narrative, allowing Freeman to explore relationships and situations in meticulous detail. The reader is immersed in vivid depictions of the mean little houses, the still dangerous WW11 bomb sites, the cafés serving stale rock buns and luke-warm tea as well as the literal and metaphorical fog that smothers everything in its reach, making once familiar and friendly places weirdly frightening. As the storyline builds and the suggestion of a ‘grass’ within the gang is ever more likely, the atmosphere becomes increasingly tense. Anna Freeman does not shy away from describing the violent outbursts between the Cutters; there is nothing idealised about the depiction of the women pickpockets, all of whom are loyal until they do not need to be! However, Florrie’s dream of going straight and marrying decent Ted is never prioritised over her love for her mother. This mother/daughter relationship is portrayed as intense, complicated and difficult and all the more believable for being so. Florrie earns a smack in the face from her mother on the latter’s first day of freedom; this is the way that Ruby has learnt to express her concern. Nevertheless, we are not invited to feel particularly sorry for Florrie; rather, the writer encourages us to understand that the Palmers know what it is to have nothing and so will do whatever they need to stay safe and solvent.
This is a fascinating read which conjures up gangland London of the 50s without ever romanticising it. And, sad to say, in reality the women are ultimately no freer from male control than at any other time in the twentieth century.
My thanks to NetGalley and Weidenfeld & Nicholson for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.

I'm not sure what's more menacing... a group of criminal women,or the poisonous for descending on London.
There's an underlying tension to the whole book,mainly I think as it feels like a count down... you know the story is told in those five days.
There is nothing worse than a bunch of women hell bent on finding who is harassing them up to the police,and it felt like violence was never far away.
The book kept pace brilliantly all the way through,weaving all the characters together,and surprising me who the grass actually was.
Good stuff.