The Odd Flamingo

by Nina Bawden, Martin Edwards (Introduction)

On a breezeless summer afternoon Will Hunt, solicitor, receives a call from his friend Celia, who has a a woman named Rose has just told her that she is pregnant with Celia’s husband Humphrey’s baby. As Will agrees to help Celia separate truth from possible blackmail, his search for Humphrey leads him back to an old haunt of The Odd Flamingo, a Chelsea nightclub of sketchy repute. But there is more to the affair than meets the eye, and after a body is found with Rose’s handbag in Little Venice, a tangled tale of deceit and violence begins to unravel, spiralling around the shady past and suspect clientele of The Odd Flamingo.

First published in 1954, The Odd Flamingo exhibits Nina Bawden’s gifts for suspense and memorable characters in a gritty mystery twisting through London’s underworld to its thrilling conclusion.

225 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 11, 2025

About the author

Nina Bawden was a popular British novelist and children's writer. Her mother was a teacher and her father a marine.

When World War II broke out she spent the school holidays at a farm in Shropshire along with her mother and her brothers, but lived in Aberdare, Wales, during term time.
Bawden attended Somerville College, Oxford, where she gained a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics.

Her novels include Carrie's War, Peppermint Pig, and The Witch's Daughter.

A number of her works have been dramatised by BBC Children's television, and many have been translated into various languages. In 2002 she was badly injured in the Potters Bar rail crash, and her husband Austen Kark was killed.

Bawden passed away at her home in London on 22 August 2012.

Reviews

[Justine Shenton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good thriller full of twists and turns and the atmosphere of the London underworld

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5⭐️ First published in 1954 and republished as part of the British Library Crime Classics Series The Odd Flamingo is a nightclub in the depths of London. It attracts a spurious clientele across the class divide ranging from the upper professional class to the seedy underworld gangster of London’’s crime world. Will Hunt is a solicitor who was a member of the Odd Flamingo in his youth when he visited with his dear friend Humphrey Stone. Both men are now middle aged with successful careers, Humphrey as a headteacher of a public school where he lives with his wife Celia and their children. As the book opens the respectable bubble around Humphrey Stone is suddenly burst when a young woman, Rose Blacker, visits Celia and tells her she is pregnant with Humphrey’s child and offers handwritten letters as proof of their affair. Distraught, Celia calls Will and asks him to help and Will finds himself back in the Odd Flamingo becoming reacquainted with its less than salubrious members. Before Will has any real success things take a nasty turn when Rose’s mother approaches Will to tell him her daughter is now missing, and then a young woman’s murdered body is pulled from a canal in Little Venice, all areas where Rose, her friends, and Humphrey have recently been and Humphrey becomes the prime suspect in her murder.

Against his better judgement Will continues to help both Humphrey and Mrs Blacker and introduces to the reader a selection of characters that are incredibly well drawn and developed some of whom are physically beautiful and others (looking at you Piers Stone) are grotesque in their over indulgence, with the exception of Will and Celia none are attractive personalities with the attractiveness varying by considerable degrees and all have secrets they wish to hide.

Although set at the height of summer, I felt while reading this I was in a permanent twilight and darkness, an accurate recreation of that underground world of dim lighting in basements, of squalid houses and dingy streets. Then there was the darkness of the crimes and the hidden depths and the shady characters involved, as a reader I felt really pulled into that world where people can be anything they want to be because there is little light to expose their true natures. Nina Bawden’s writing was incredibly successful at creating a world of suspense, as I moved through the novel new twists and unexpected turns emerged from the gloom and by the end I began to feel that Will had an impossible task in trying to discover any kind of truth amongst the deceit.

I loved this novel, it’s a inspired piece of writing that doesn’t let the reader rest, but moves at a pace making the reader look one way and then throwing up a some sudden twists that move the narrative off into a very different direction and ends with a very satisfying but unexpected finale.