Why Soho? By Jessie Keane

Well if I am going to talk about Soho, then first I am going to have to give you a little background. I ran away from home when I was sixteen (maybe even fifteen, now I think about it). I walked out of school (I’d hardly ever attended, anyway), walked away from the ruins of my family (the family firm had collapsed, we’d been evicted by the banks, my father had just died of lung cancer) and went to London to stay with my friend Joanna, who had a dirty little flat in Soho near Berwick Street Market. 

I never saw the dirt, of course. A Romany child used to open country, I took one look at the teeming city of London and in particular the steamy streets – Old Compton Street, Frith Street - of Soho and fell utterly, hopelessly in love with surroundings that were so very different to the ones I’d grown up in.

Then I fell in love all over again, with a man we met one night. We came out of Raymond’s Revue Bar and went into the Windmill Theatre and there he was. Sadly, his attention was focused on Joanna, but my attention was focused on him. I’d been scratching away in notebooks ever since I could crawl, writing playlets, westerns, sci-fi fantasies, anything. But the sight of this man knocked me sideways and convinced me that I would have to set him down on paper. The black curling hair. The sapphire-blue eyes. His flashiness, his Savile Row suits, his vicuna coats, his shoes from Lobbs, his latent aura of power. Gorgeous!

Of course, I was a minnow among sharks in 60’s Soho, but my extreme innocence was a sort of protection. I sailed through every obstacle and filled notebooks full of details I noticed as I passed through. That black-haired man with the gangster look about him became, inevitably, set in my mind. He never left it, not even when I came back to my boring existence at home. He stayed with me all through relationships, marriages, moves, everything, until one bleak day I was sitting under a quilt watching a crime DVD. I couldn’t afford to heat the flat, I was too poor for that. I had no education, no money. I’d had a succession of boring low-paid job. Wrapping chips in the local chip shop. Sweeping up in a hairdressers. Slicing bacon in the Co-op. Now I was really on my uppers, but I was still making notes and dreaming of being an actual, proper writer.

Then Annie Bailey – who would later become Annie Carter – strolled into my head and I thought, what fun. A strong Alpha woman and I would place her in among the gangsters and see what she would get up to. 

I sold my wedding dress, bought a typewriter, and set to. Before three months was up, I had finished writing the very first of the Annie Carter novels, Dirty Game. Of course, that gorgeous man I’d met in the Windmill in Soho was in there too, clashing with Annie at every turn. It was the most fun I’d had, ever, writing, that book. People talk about writers ‘finding their voice’ and I had always laughed at that, not understanding what they meant. Suddenly, I did. I’d found my voice with a vengeance.

So off I trotted to the Post Office, clutching six carefully wrapped packages. Each one contained a synopsis and a copy of the book, bound for a variety of agents. At this point, my partner took pity on me.

‘You’re bright,’ he said. ‘Maybe it’s time to stop all this dreaming. Get a proper job.’

Which made me dig my heels in all the more. I posted the manuscripts off, and waited. Rejection slips soon poured through the door. Four of them. But two out of the six were interested, and one said she might have someone who would like this book, but not to get my hopes up, and why hadn’t I numbered the pages? I was that inexperienced, that much of a numpty!

That agent invited me to London, talked me through a few alterations. I was so happy to get back to the Smoke, I was ecstatic. Even if nothing ever came of this, at least I’d got to the first fence.

I went home, rewrote. Sent the thing back to her. It was August Bank Holiday, nothing was happening, publishing was empty of workers, she told me. Just hold on. Don’t get your hopes up.

I didn’t.

Then two days later she phoned me again.

‘I’ve got you a three book deal,’ she said. ‘For a six figure sum.’

I couldn’t help but think I had Soho, my time there as a wet-behind-the-ears, my meeting that beautiful black-haired stranger, to thank for this miracle. So don’t ask me why Soho. Ask me why not Soho. It may be changed these days – a little tamer, a little more polished – but anytime I go back there now the magic, for me, remains. 

This is the place where I found my inspiration and became a professional writer, this is the place that inspired Dirty Game, the very first of the Annie Carter novels and now I am launching the seventh novel about her and her dangerous, glamorous life and her love/hate relationship with Max. She had come a long way, baby! And so have I. Dirty Game shot straight into the Heatseekers chart at number one, and all my books have been in the Sunday Times Top Twenty chart. So I have a lot to thank Annie for. And Soho, bless it!

Never Go Back by Jessie Keane is published 2^nd February 2023 in Hardback by Hodder, priced £16.99

The Carter women don't follow the rules: They make them.Gangster Max Carter and his ex-wife Annie Carter are leading separate lives in separate countries: past hurts and broken promises cannot be resolved. But then a summons to Majorca and a tragic death makes Max question all that has happened to him over many years. He had two brothers - both are now dead. His closest friend has been found hanging from a London bridge. As the police wrestle with a seemingly unsolvable case, Max is forced to revisit his painful past to find answers to a mystery that seems to make no sense at all. Who is targeting his family and why? Annie Carter is at a crossroads in life. She has a luxurious lifestyle but no one to share it with, and Max clearly thinks she is in danger too. Her daughter, Layla, has left her mafia lover Alberto Barolli and is back in London, stumbling into the police investigation and making waves. You should never go back, so the old saying goes. But then, the Carter women don't follow the rules, they make them. And when the truth of what's been happening is finally revealed, will the Carter family stand together - or will it finish them for good?

More information about Jessie Keane can be found on her Facebook page. You can also follow her on Twitter @realjessiekeane