I really enjoyed this book. Part of that enjoyment is that it felt as if it had been personally written for me. I am precisely the same age as the younger generation of the characters and was a student in Sheffield during the miners strike. I remember the 'battle of Orgreave', the city filled with thousands of striking miners and joining the demonstrations shouting 'Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, Out, Out, Out'. Districts like Broomhill, Crookes and Ranmoor are where it all goes on, and that's where I lived. The restaurant is in the Rivelin Valley and that's where I used to take myself off, to try and learn glycolysis pathways in a hidden corner in the middle of the woods. I also appreciated the occasional judicious use of dialect and typical Yorkshire phrasing; enough to evoke the atmosphere without being intrusive.
The nostalgia is only a small part of the reason I enjoyed it though. Most importantly, it is great storytelling, an intriguing plot, believable and well fleshed-out characters; the only thing that was disappointing was the that the ending rather fizzled out.
I'm definitely going to be looking our for other books by Philip Hensner.