White Mice Book

The narrator of White Mice, Jamie Greenhalgh, is an ordinary student sitting in an Arabic café near a Paris youth hostel. In one moment, a phone call from his older sister Louise, a model, propels him into the entourage of the couturier Gianni Osano. Osano is ageing, losing his touch, drinking too much. Louise and the other models swing from euphoria to despair, driven by a cocktail of cocaine, heroin and nicotine. Gianni's new partner is a sinister sub-Mafioso whose ideas for improving the Osano finances involve the theft of his Paris collection and an insurance scam. As the circus travels from Paris to Milan and then back again, Jamie is drawn ever further into circumstances and relationships that he cannot control. Blincoe's earlier novels refused to be defined by the rules of the genre (crime fiction) into which they seemed to fall. There is a similar ambivalence in White Mice. Like Jamie, Blincoe is both dazzled by the glamour of the fashion world and fascinated by the realities behind the façade. His novel is definitely not satire yet nor is it celebration. It has many of the elements of a thriller yet, for long stretches, Blincoe is more interested in character and relationships than in driving his plot forward. Like the industry amid which it is set, White Mice is glitzy, contradictory and self-consciously obsessed with style and attitude. --Nick RennisonRead More