Kate Atkinson has become a “must read” author ever since I read her debut novel Behind The Scenes at the Museum. Shrines of Gaiety isn’t one of her best but, for me, Kate Atkinson on an off- day is still way ahead of many of her contemporaries.

This novel plunges us into the heart of London’s Soho district in the 1920s where Nellie Coker reigns supreme as the owner of four glitzy nightclubs. She’s a shrewd businesswoman who has raked in the profits by catering to the whims of film stars, government ministers and “bright young things”. But Nellie is also not above the odd bit of bribery if it means the police turn a blind eye to her business affairs and the indiscretions of her clientele.

When the novel opens Nellie has just been released from prison for a breach of licensing laws. She’s had plenty of time to think during her six months inside — time to speculate that someone is queering her pitch by paying a higher level of backhanders; someone who may be trying to muscle in on her territory. To add to her feelings of unease, there’s a new DCI at the local station who’s taking a close interest in her clubs.

Shrines of Gaiety shows there’s a darker underbelly to Nellie’s world of glamour and glitz. The clubs are magnets for young and impressionable girls who dream of a life in show business. They’re ripe for exploitation and easily disposed of when they prove too troublesome — all too often ending up ditched in the Thames. Some members of the police take the view their deaths are not worth investigating — “no-one will miss them” says one officer — but DCI Frobisher is sickened by the sight of their young bodies in the mortuary and determines to get them justice.

This is a novel with a multi-level plot and numerous issues — police corruption, prostitution, back street abortions, drug abuse, mental health to name but a few. Fortunately we get some touches of humour to lighten the bleakness. Atkinson has some fun at the expense of librarians (“The library had not been a career choice. After all, who would choose to be a librarian?”) and people like Nellie’s son Ramsey who has ambitions of becoming a best-selling author.

His masterpiece will be a crime novel, but also“‘a razor-sharp dissection of the various strata of society in the wake of the destruction of war.” Poor Ramsey doesn’t know the first thing about how to construct a plot but he sets about it with gusto.

These were ideal conditions for the creation of his magnum opus, and Ramsay was hammering on the Remington’s keys and shuttling its carriage with abandon, fuelled by nothing more than Lipton’s tea and a tin of cocaine throat pastilles that he’d cadged off one of the dancers at the Sphinx. His head was always in the clouds. ‘I’m writing a novel,’ he told her. As if that was something to crow about. As if there weren’t enough novels in the world already.

The pity is hat sometimes this humour tips over from wit into farce — some of the villains Nellie is up against feel straight out of central casting).

Shrines of Gaiety takes a while to truly get underway — there are more than a dozen key characters and many more on the fringe. You need your wits about you with this novel because the narration spins in dizzying fashion from one character to another and skips forward and back in time. Sometimes we get straight narration but then occasionally this will be split by the voice of an all knowing narrator who seems to mock the characters.

And yet I’ll forgive Atkinson for this because she conjures up the atmosphere of London so well, from the glamour of the nightclubs to the drabness of its lodging houses, from the hedonistic lifestyle of the wealthy (but dim) to the poverty of its underdogs who sleep in doorways. The juxtaposition of these two sides of city life is what really held my attention.