Charlie’s experiences in the Second World War are seen to underlie the melancholic and self-destructive streak that is evidenced in his drinking.įrank unexpectedly meets Charlie one night in Minneapolis, prompting them to recall they have met before - in Indo-China (later Vietnam), at the defeat of the French army at Dien Bien Phu. We also learn of Frank’s difficult childhood in Chicago and of his war service in the Pacific, after which he has educated himself on the GI Bill. I watched the hanging chad drama on CNN in Moscow where I was completing my research.’

‘There was a poignant contrast with George Bush II, who was elected as I wrote. ‘One of the things I learned from studying the Nixon-Kennedy debates is that these were both high-calibre candidates, extremely well informed,’ said Faulks. In addition to his drink problems, however, Charlie has made several unwise investments and is being blackmailed by the security services following a liaison in the Far East.įrank travels through America, and the book describes what he sees at the famous Kennedy-Nixon television debate in Chicago, his home town. He i s a clever but impatient man, whose love of jazz initially provides a bond between himself and Frank. Meanwhile, Charlie’s alcohol dep endency becomes problematic.

Frank frets at his necessary absences caused by work, and encourages Mary to take a semi-permanent hotel room in New York. Mary struggles to balance her loyalties to Charlie, her children, her dying mother in London and to the new love of her life. He appears to be getting his career back on course when he is sent to cover the 1960 election between John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon.īy then, he and Mary are embarked on a hopeless love affair. Frank is in a professional limbo, after having been suspended by his newspaper at the request of the House un-American Activities committee. They have two small children who are despatched, largely for financial reasons, to school in England.ĭestabilised by this separation from her children and by her mother’s impending death from cancer, Mary falls in love with an American newspaperman, Frank Renzo. The main character is Mary van der Linden, a lively and attractive woman, married to a hard-drinking British diplomat, Charlie, in Washington at the height of Russian dominance in the Cold War.

Green dolphin street book 1944