The Small Back Room
By (Author) Nigel Balchin
Orion Publishing Co
Weidenfeld & Nicolson
8th December 2015
10th September 2015
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
823.912
Paperback
208
Width 134mm, Height 196mm, Spine 16mm
187g
Sammy Rice is a weapons scientist, one of the 'back room boys' of the Second World War. A crippling disability has left him cynical and disillusioned - he struggles with a drink problem at home, and politics and petty pride at work. Worse still, he fears he is not good enough for the woman he loves.
The stakes are raised when the enemy begin to drop a new type of booby-trapped bomb, causing many casualties. Only Sammy has the know-how to diffuse it - but as he comes face to face with real danger, all his old inadequacies return to haunt him. Can he, at last, prove his worth and put his demons to restThe missing writer of the forties
A superb storyteller - SUNDAY TIMESA writer of geniusBalchin writes about timeless things, the places in the heartNigel Balchin was born in 1908 and graduated in Natural Science from Cambridge University. During the Second World War he worked as a psychologist in the personnel section of the British War Office, before becoming Deputy Scientific Advisor to the Army Council. He wrote numerous books, including How to Run a Bassoon Factory (under the pseudonym Mark Spade), and Darkness Falls from the Air. He died in 1970.