Scudder

The novel traces the lives of George "Scudder" Baker, his family and his three male and one female school friends as they move from childhood to adult life. It is a man's tale of love and war. It starts like "Kes"or "Billy Elliot" and slowly develops into shades of "Train Spotting". George Baker and his friends are growing up in the city of Stoke-on-Trent a decade after The Second World War has ended. At this time Stoke has its many pottery factories and it also has coal mines, a big steelworks and a large tyre factory. Most working class men are employed in heavy industry. This is George's environment. Scudder is the boy who takes the 11+ test and becomes a High School boy, leaving his friends behind. John Conroy is the much cleverer boy who does not take the 11+, leaves school early and goes to work with his dad in the coal mines. Brian Watts is the talented sportsman of the group and Graham Hains, "Grey Manes" the most mature one of the four. He is to follow his dad into the police force and to become a detective. Jennifer Edmunds is a very clever "bad girl", who keeps in touch with all of them as they grow up. This though is no "Famous Five" novel. Hugh Rowley is much older than these five and is George's nemesis. He is a violent bully and is to move up in the criminal underworld of the early sixties when a more affluent Britain first saw the introduction of soft, then hard, drugs to a wider community. In the background are George's family and the families of his friends all of whom live on the very new and very large Mitchell council estate "The Mitch". Many of the fathers had fought in the war. George's father Joseph had been at Dunkirk and then, as a para, at Arnhem. Joe Baker had re-appeared from Holland, after being missing for months, with Steffan Zelewski and a group of Polish soldiers. The book traces all these lives from the hard times of rationing and austerity in the fifties to the coming of affluence and rock and roll in the early sixties. Scudder meets to love of his life, but will Jennifer let him go or does she have a bigger plan for Scudder? It is an amusing coming of age tale with an undercurrent of violence as Scudder has to deal with his many problems. Some of these are concerned with his upward social mobility and "fitting in", others with the solution to his feud with his enemy Hugh Rowley.