Police Constable Pete Bradley has one year in the force and dreams of moving up the ladder. He's assigned as an aid to CID and working a routine nightshift with his partner when they stumble across a young woman's body. She was working as a prostitute when she was strangled, her body dumped by a riverbank. His search for her killer brings him deep into Soho's underbelly. Meanwhile Stella, a young fashion designer with a promising career ahead of her, is woken by terrifying nightmares that echo the last hours of the dead women. Sixties London explodes in all its ferocious colour, with fascists and Teds, migrants and hippies living in close proximity. Bad Penny Blues is a tender paean to the city, a novel with a twisted mystery at its heart.
Bad Penny Blues
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Review
`Another tour de force...Authentically atmospheric and very evocative, the book's song-title chapter headings supply an inbuilt soundtrack.' --Laura Wilson, Guardian
`[A] fast-paced tale sure to please fans of crime writers Ken Bruen... a confident and convincing voice.' --Jennifer Ryan, Image
`Cements her reputation ... should propel her into a new league... loaded with pace... Unsworth brilliantly captures the era...' --Henry Sutton, Daily Mirror
`It's only one of the best crime novels this year, it's one of the best of the decade.' --Gordon Harries, NeedleScratchStatic.com
`Unsworth lives up to her growing reputation as one of the stars of UK noir... a wholly absorbing thriller' --Yasmin Sulaiman, The List
`Meticulous examination of post-war Britain... Unsworth thrashes her fellow practitioners... Smart noir entertainment with the bitter aftertaste of truth' -- Christopher Fowler, FT
`A gripping page-turner.' --Stylist
`A magnificent tapestry of period and place, confirming her status as one of Britain's most potent writers of noir.' --Marcel Berlins, The Times
`Gripping noir fiction... her narrative deftly weaves through curls of cigarette smoke and the pockets of blackness.' --Ross Bennett, Mojo
`Enthralling... a must-read' -- Spirit and Destiny
`This bright, beautifully written fictionalisation of an actual series of crimes is the fruit of careful research... an exciting story' --Jessica Mann, Literary Review
`[A] fast-paced tale sure to please fans of crime writers Ken Bruen... a confident and convincing voice.' --Jennifer Ryan, Image
`Cements her reputation ... should propel her into a new league... loaded with pace... Unsworth brilliantly captures the era...' --Henry Sutton, Daily Mirror
`It's only one of the best crime novels this year, it's one of the best of the decade.' --Gordon Harries, NeedleScratchStatic.com
`Unsworth lives up to her growing reputation as one of the stars of UK noir... a wholly absorbing thriller' --Yasmin Sulaiman, The List
`Meticulous examination of post-war Britain... Unsworth thrashes her fellow practitioners... Smart noir entertainment with the bitter aftertaste of truth' -- Christopher Fowler, FT
`A gripping page-turner.' --Stylist
`A magnificent tapestry of period and place, confirming her status as one of Britain's most potent writers of noir.' --Marcel Berlins, The Times
`Gripping noir fiction... her narrative deftly weaves through curls of cigarette smoke and the pockets of blackness.' --Ross Bennett, Mojo
`Enthralling... a must-read' -- Spirit and Destiny
`This bright, beautifully written fictionalisation of an actual series of crimes is the fruit of careful research... an exciting story' --Jessica Mann, Literary Review
Book Description
Colourful, evocative novel set in Sixties Soho from the author of The Singer
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Bad Penny Blues is probably the best sixties-set British crime novel since Jake Arnott's The Long Firm. Drifting between Soho and Notting Hill, it takes weird and apparently completely disparate elements - the music of a record producer very much like the eccentric Joe Meek, Spiritualism, police corruption, the still-unsolved 'Jack The Stripper' prostitute murders - and weaves them into a compelling and highly unconventional thriller. Part of its appeal is that it neatly sidesteps so many of the cliches of novels set in the period, while still acknowledging the deep historical background. Each of Cathi Unsworth's novels has seen her progress in leaps and bounds as a writer, and Bad Penny Blues is not only easily her best to date, it's one of the best British crime novels of 2009.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
By Mr Spencer
Format:Paperback
I arrived at this book not as a lover of crime fiction, nor even as a regular reader of novels, but as a fan of Cathi Unsworth since her days as a journalist on sadly missed music weekly Sounds, where her name first became synonymous with witty, savage, thrilling prose in her coverage of all the coolest underground bands of the late 1980s. It was during this period that she began to put her musical background to good use by channeling punk's defiant, questioning spirit into her sharply written reviews, honing her words until she found a way to distill her anger, refining it into a form of literary energy that later evolved into her early books The Not Knowing and The Singer.
Bad Penny Blues shares with its excellent predecessors a dark atmosphere soundtracked by hip tunes from a certain era, but it is also true that in terms of compelling storytelling it marks a huge leap forward. In her new book Unsworth evokes an only partly-fictional world of dead prostitutes, spooky musicians, kinky toffs and bent cops planting bricks on kids at West End Central nick; this is a strictly post-war London landscape, soon to be groovified by the Beatles, but for now it remains monochrome and murderous, inhabited by a sleazy web of criminals and establishment pervs whose paths overlap as a series of gruesome killings remain unsolved, the list of victims growing as the Sixties start to swing.
The trip Unsworth takes us on is often disturbing - particularly as it's based on actual events surrounding the real 'Jack The Stripper' murders, which took place in West London within the same distant yet eerily recent time frame and which, yes, remain unsolved to this day - but she adds humour to the mix plus plenty of switched-on pop winks for those who can tell their Joe Meeks from their Humphrey Lytteltons, so there's no need to be afraid unless, of course, you know more about the quite possibly still alive 'Stripper' than you should...
Bad Penny Blues shares with its excellent predecessors a dark atmosphere soundtracked by hip tunes from a certain era, but it is also true that in terms of compelling storytelling it marks a huge leap forward. In her new book Unsworth evokes an only partly-fictional world of dead prostitutes, spooky musicians, kinky toffs and bent cops planting bricks on kids at West End Central nick; this is a strictly post-war London landscape, soon to be groovified by the Beatles, but for now it remains monochrome and murderous, inhabited by a sleazy web of criminals and establishment pervs whose paths overlap as a series of gruesome killings remain unsolved, the list of victims growing as the Sixties start to swing.
The trip Unsworth takes us on is often disturbing - particularly as it's based on actual events surrounding the real 'Jack The Stripper' murders, which took place in West London within the same distant yet eerily recent time frame and which, yes, remain unsolved to this day - but she adds humour to the mix plus plenty of switched-on pop winks for those who can tell their Joe Meeks from their Humphrey Lytteltons, so there's no need to be afraid unless, of course, you know more about the quite possibly still alive 'Stripper' than you should...
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By Benny Boy
Format:Paperback
I've enjoyed all Cathi Unsworth's novels but this one is going one step beyond. The opening few pages are amazing, hit you head-on and set you up for a roller coaster ride. I'm a big fan of Derek Raymond and, for my money, Unsworth is hitting that same brilliant stride with her own brand of dark crime fiction. Looking forward to the next one!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Evocative crime novel set in 60's London
Cathi Unsworth has created a multi- layered story told from a number of perspectives and given continuity by her beautifully written commentary of London in the early 60's. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Jezzataff
4.0 out of 5 stars
Thoroughly enjoyable
I was recommended this book as it was an author I had never read before.
It moved at a good pace with little touches of the supernatural but not over the top.
It moved at a good pace with little touches of the supernatural but not over the top.
Published 3 months ago by caviar
1.0 out of 5 stars
awful, awful, awful
i have never been inclined to write a review on amazon - but this book is so badly written, so painfully cliched - that i felt compelled to warn others not to buy this book. Read more
Published 6 months ago by palplec
4.0 out of 5 stars
Engaging but flawed
I bought this book because I loved the the author's 'The Singer'. This one has some of the same strengths - an acute portrayal of time and place, this time bohemian London in the... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Arturo
5.0 out of 5 stars
Legendary British Noir
Cathi Unsworth has used all the tools in her impressive literary arsenal in Bad Penny Blues. Classic, oldschool British noir on one hand and hugely inventive and iconoclastic with... Read more
Published on 21 Feb 2011 by Daniel Bowman
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliantly written
Most crime fans will have heard of Bad Penny Blues by Cathi Unsworth and quite a few of you will have read it. Read more
Published on 19 Nov 2010 by Paul D Brazill
3.0 out of 5 stars
Atmospheric Fictional Take on London's "Stripper Murders"
This fictional take on the unsolved real-life "Jack the Stripper" murders in London from 1959-64 delve deeply into the era's sordid side. Read more
Published on 6 Oct 2010 by A. Ross
1.0 out of 5 stars
Just plain bad
Oh what a disappointment. I was hoping for Jake Arnott and instead I got Martina Cole on a very bad day. Cathi Unsworth is a music journalist and therefore writes for a living. Read more
Published on 23 Sep 2010 by Catherine Murphy
5.0 out of 5 stars
Chilling and cool
Cathi Unsworth does it again with this gripping and haunting noir novel... subtely dark and overtly stylish, this book's engrossing pace and rhythm allowed it's characters to stay... Read more
Published on 4 Feb 2010 by Celestial
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