A few years ago, magazines ran pieces about how the 2020s were likely to be the 1920s all over again, full of excess and abandon on the heels of a global recession and much political divisiveness. Little did we know that we'd be spending the first years of these "Roaring Twenties" hiding out in our homes. Whether or not it was Atkinson's intention to give readers who feel disappointed by our current era a little literary escapism into the previous '20s, that's what's on offer in her novel Shrines of Gaiety, a delightfully manic journey into London's Jazz Age underworld, which she so brilliantly brings to life.

Atkinson's novel opens outside Holloway prison, where a crowd has gathered to witness the release of one of London's most unlikely criminals: middle-class, Irish-born, diminutive Nellie Coker, who's been locked up for licensing violations at one of the many nightclubs she ...