Rescue Man

"Rescue Man" opens on the eve of the Second World War. With uncertainty in the air as the world seems on the brink of disaster, Liverpool is a city tense in anticipation of the coming conflict. Orphaned as a child and now approaching forty with no prospect of a family of his own, Tom Baines is a man emotionally adrift. Unable to commit to anything, either personal or professional, he is left looking in at life from the outside, with only his fascination for architecture to connect him. The outbreak of war brings a new sense of purpose and unexpected relationships. Baines joins the Rescue Men, retrieving the wounded and dying from bombed buildings. Yet in wartime, ordinary rules are suspended, risks taken and Baines finds himself caught up in a love affair that is as heady and all-consuming as it is transgressive. With writing that is both immediate and deeply steeped in its time, Anthony Quinn recreates wartime Liverpool with emotional intensity in this powerful story of love found and lost. "Thoughtful, beautifully observed and utterly compelling" Independent on Sunday "A fascinating novel - very moving and beautifully nuanced and observed - it beguiles with a tremendous slow-burning power" William Boyd "A real page-tuner" Mail on Sunday "Quinn has a cinematic eye for narrative scope ... Like all good novels this book tells us something new" Spectator "Tells the slowly unfolding story of Baines' journey of self-discovery with great subtlety" Sunday Times