SINGAPORE GRIP

ITV drama TV tie-in paperback edition by the Booker Prize winner. The action is set in Singapore in 1939 where Walter Blackett, ruthless rubber merchant, is head of British Singapore's oldest and most powerful firm. He and his family inhabit a world of luxury, cocktails and dress parties and Walter's only problem seems to be who to leave his business to when he retires. His son Monty is a failure in his eyes, so that leaves only his two daughters Kate and Joan. Kate is too young, and Joan is an intelligent young woman who if she can be persuaded to marry the right kind of man things could work out well. Walter thinks the right man may just have arrived; his business partner Mr Webb having recently passed away, his son Matthew has come to Singapore to take over his father's interest in the business. Meanwhile slowly the Japanese army is fighting its way towards Singapore. It is the eve of the Fall of Singapore. A story of love and war, a tragicomic tale of a city under siege and a dying way of life, filled with succulent vignettes of colonial life and English eccentricity and a vast looming war in south-east Asia in the background. 681pp in chunky paperback.