Queens of London

Webb’s (Strangers in the Night) brilliantly feminist historical novel plucks two genuine leaders from interwar London and tells the drama-filled story of what might have pitted them against each other. Lilian Wyles, “the woman in Scotland Yard,” and Alice Diamond, better known as “Diamond Annie,” make perfect foils in a seamlessly plotted cat-and-mouse game. Wyles pursues an arrest that will get her her due respect in a London police force dominated by men, while Diamond plans a score that will set her girl gang of shoplifters up for life. Narrator Amy Scanlon’s voicework captures a range of believable emotion in these two real-life icons. She voices Diamond with hard-bitten determination, and Wyles’s exasperated acceptance of the inevitability of “women’s work” rings true. The impetus for their lives colliding, a runaway kid adopted by the Forty Elephants gang under Diamond’s authority and reported missing while Wyles is on duty, is convincingly moppet-like even as she reveals a toughness to match the Forties. From the brassy and arrogant gang to law-abiding friends to runaway orphans, distinctly voiced and fully characterized women are found throughout.