The Confidence Man PDF Æ The Confidence PDF \ Vivien Alcock then an ambulance driver who would go on to become his second wife in and a well _{The Confidence PDF \} known children's author She would also greatly influence Garfield's writing giving him suggestions for his writing including the original idea for Smith After the war Garfield worked as a biochemical laboratory technician at the Whittington Hospital in Islington writing in his spare time until the s when he was successful enough to write full time In the couple adopted a baby girl called Jane after Jane Austen a favourite writer of both parentsGarfield wrote his first book the pirate novel Jack Holborn for adult readers but a Constable Co editor saw its potential as a children's novel and persuaded him to adapt it for a younger audience In that form it was published by Constable in His second book Devil in the Fog won the first annual Guardian Prize and was serialised for television as were several later works below Devil was the first of several historical adventure novels typically set late in the eighteenth century and featuring a character of humble origins in this case a boy from a family of traveling actors pushed into the midst of a threatening intrigue Another was Smith with the eponymous hero a young pickpocket accepted into a wealthy household it won the Phoenix Award in Yet another was Black Jack in which a young apprentice is forced by accident and his conscience to accompany a murderous criminalIn Garfield's work started to move in new directions with The God Beneath the Sea a re telling of numerous Greek myths in one narrative written by Garfield and Edward Blishen and illustrated by Charles Keeping It won the annual Carnegie Medal for British children's books Garfield Blishen and Keeping collaborated again on a sequel The Golden Shadow The Drummer Boy was another adventure story but concerned with a central moral problem and apparently aimed at somewhat older readers a trend continued in The Prisoners of September republished in by Lions Tracks under the title Revolution The Pleasure Garden and The Confidence Man The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris was a black comedy in which two boys decide to test the plausibility of Romulus and Remus using one of the boys' baby sister Most notable at the time was a series of linked long short stories about apprentices published separately between and and then as a collection The Apprentices The adult themed books of the mid s met with a mixed reception and Garfield returned to the model of his earlier books with John Diamond which won a Whitbread Award in and The December Rose In he also wrote an ending for The Mystery of Edwin Drood unfinished at the death of Dickens an author who had been a major influence on Garfield's own styleHe was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in On June he died of cancer at the Whittington Hospital where he had once worked.