The Accidental Daughter (Paperback, UK ed.)

Ace Hooker is two years old when his soldier father is executed for cowardice in the First World War. He grows up with this grim secret and comes to believe he is blighted by a rogue gene. Rose is the result of a night of passion between Ace and a Windmill girl during the Blitz. Intense and erratic, she has grown up with adoptive parents in New Orleans as a civil rights campaigner and photographer. Early life in Soho is a carefree one edged with mystery for Ace. As a fatherless child, the mercurial boy is befriended by a prostitute, a publican and a one-legged musician. He rejects the family's worthy tailoring business to become a sax-playing London cabby. Another war looms and fearing disgrace on the battlefield he joins the Fire Service with his taxi and unwittingly lands himself on the frontline of the Blitz.