Poor Girls

The brilliant new literary crime novel from the award-winning writer of People of Abandoned Character explores the world of the real-life all female crime gang, the Forty Elephants.

This is a story about the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’. If the ‘haves’ must flaunt their riches, then the ‘have nots’ will take some for themselves…

It’s 1920, and 19-year-old Eleanor Mackridge is convinced there’s more to life than her parents two-up two-down in Brighton. When she’s recruited by the Forty Elephants, a notorious female crime gang led by the enigmatic Alice Diamond, Eleanor feels like she’s finally living. Reinvented as ‘Nell the Mack’, she’s soon drawn in by the gang’s sisterhood, caught up in the swirl of glamorous parties and daring heists. The good times roll, but the party must end sometime…

In Elephants and Diamonds, Clare Whitfield once again turns well-known history on its head, revealing the hidden underbelly of the ‘roaring twenties’.