MR. LOVE AND JUSTICE

Ted Justice and Frankie love both start new careers at the same time-- Ted as a plain plain-man on the London vice squad; Frankie as a pimp. Their lives assume certain parallels. Ted and his girl can't get married, so they housekeep together; Frankie's lady leaves the streets to become a call girl and they rent a flat in the same housing project as Ted. The four formally most in an atmosphere of mutual distrust over a snuffbox supposedly stolen by Frankie's girl from a distinctly U brothel. Frankie acts honestly, Ted doesn't. When they are both betrayed by colleagues, they learn to respect and even like each other. They later become firm friends- although Ted doesn't believe in the law as Frankie does, and Frankie doesn't share Ted's belief in the importance of love. Further, the pimp now plans to become a private detective, while the policeman plans to set his girl up in a dressmaking shop which could well become a place of assignation. Perhaps the lesson to be learned is that parallel lives do indeed meet. In spite of the author's annoying plot manipulations and procrustean efforts to make a sort of morality play from his material, the book gives an interesting, calm and cool picture of the details of a copper and a and milieu.