Bad Penny Blues [Kindle Edition]

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.

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...

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!