Walsh portrays Davidson as sympathetic and absurdly naive. In public places, he affectionately accosts prostitutes and girls he thinks may be in danger of becoming prostitutes, takes them to restaurants and theatres and visits them in their squalid rooms late at night. Apparently, it does not occur to him that observers may doubt the purity of his motives. His most attractive, most wicked candidate for redemption is an angelically pretty, no-holes-barred 17-year-old with a witty command of the slang of gutter and bedroom. Her uninhibited honesty enchants him. He succumbs physically, just once, to her hand, ‘as hot as the flames of Hades,’ and her mouth. In London, he experiences temporary bliss and long-lasting guilt.

Long before the ostensible ecumenical tolerance of today, Davidson warns his protégées against ‘the clutches of papism’. He takes one of them to the home of her Irish father and deplores his Mariolatry and the way he rolls his eyes upward when appealing to God, as if He lived in a room on the first floor.

However, after the Church of England rejects him, Davidson seeks comfort in Roman Catholicism. Walsh writes with great fluency and gusto. His novel resonates in interestingly complex neurotic depths.

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