Good but not what I thought I was getting

I picked this one up as a novel of postwar Britain, which it isn't. Its a bizarre coming of age story mixed in with the peculiarities of the often overlapping secret worlds of espionage and petty crime. It starts slow, but if the reader perseveres, it becomes worth the slog about 40% of the way in. I subtract one star for two reasons. First, the over precious writing style may make getting through the opening stages difficult. If I were not so set in my ways of finishing what I start, I would have abandoned this maybe 30 pages in, which would have been a shame. The second problem is a set of scenes set in Naples. For reasons I cannot explain without massive spoilers, the location simply makes no sense. While the actual history is alluded at rather than spelled out, it just doesn't work for being in that region of Italy. It should be in the northeast.

###

