Frank Norman - Later Work

Later Work

A further novel, Dodgem Greaser, published in 1971, contained the fictionalised memoirs of a fairground boy, certainly based on Norman's own boyhood fairground experiences.

Norman's London reprinted a selection of Norman's early journalism, while Lock'em up and Count'em provides an appraisal of and a plan of reform for the British prison system. The Penguin collection The Lives of Frank Norman (1972) contains extracts from four of his previously published autobiographical books. A further memoir Why Fings Went West (1975) deals specifically with theatre life in the late 1950s and early 1960s. His last published work of non-fiction was The Fake's Progress written in collaboration with its subject Tom Keating, the art forger and his wife Geraldine Norman, whom he married in 1971.

Norman's novels of the 1970s lacked some of the power of his earlier work. One of our Own is a rambling novel of East End life; Much Ado About Nuffink (1974), is a semi-autobiographical novel of a working-class playwright whose play "Who Do They Fink They're 'Aving A Go At, Then" becomes a critical success. Down and Out in High Society (1975) is a novel about Soho.

Three late novels, Too Many Crooks Spoil the Caper (1979), The Dead Butler Caper (1980) and The Baskerville Caper (1981) found Norman back in strong form in a series featuring Ed Nelson, an under-employed Soho private detective with a penchant for Hankey Bannister Scotch whisky.

Frank Norman died in December 1980 of Hodgkin's lymphoma.