Amid the shabby shops, dilapidated buildings and rubbly lots that remain, downtown Brooklyn has begun to assume a sleek corporate air.

On the left-hand side of the long slope are several tall office blocks, a four-star hotel and a mix of shabby shops that were to have disappeared in a grand boulevard plan that somehow kept slipping off the drawing-board.

But few, if any, resent its lack of conveniences or its status as a protected, historic district because it is free of the urban clutter of shabby shops and fast-food outlets from which they have escaped.

The murderer had been the owner of a shabby shop in Jeris's district, who made a living buying and selling secondhand goods.

Parades of shabby shops, gathered like mongrel dogs on a street corner, were parted by a grim council estate, and then reassembled.

It was late September and the evening dusk cast a kindly veil over the dinginess of the rows of small houses and shabby shops encircling the hospital.

Grey velvet slippers she unearthed in a small rather shabby shop down a side street, and matching tights.

They had crossed the bridge and were in a narrow little street of shabby shops near Clapham Junction before they talked again.

What Daddy's got are three cheap, shabby shops selling cheap, shabby suits to cheap shabby fools who wouldn't recognise a decent cloth if it were shoved down their throats.