I'm not positive, but I believe Old Filth may be one of the books responsible for the trip to London I am taking one week from today. My father turns 70 the week after next and we had been talking for months about taking a trip for his birthday, but he kept changing his mind about where he wanted to go. Among the places he suggested were the Faroe Islands, India, New Orleans, Berlin, and Iran. When I went to visit him in late August, he surprised me by saying, "How about London?" He told me he'd read two books set or partly set in London and that had gotten him curious. I gather that the books were set before the war and he'd been doing research on the damage from the Blitz. Separately, he brought me a copy of Old Filth, which he was reading at the time, on a visit to Brooklyn a few months back, but I already owned it (it had been recommended to me by another friend some time ago). In any case, very little of the book is actually set in London, but the acknowledgments include a reference to this bookstore, which I have added to my to-visit list for our trip. I'll have to find out what the second London book he read was.
This book is brilliant with foreshadowing and the way the narrative unfolds. I was nearly sure I knew - and grew ever more suspicious - what would be revealed at the end, but it took the whole book to get there. When all was revealed, it satisfied a desire to know that had been carefully built up from almost the start. As I said, brilliant.
