Cathi Unsworth

London 1959: Police Constable Pete Bradley has done one year in the force and dreams of moving up.

His destiny arrives when the body of a young woman is dumped on the banks of the Thames. She’s the first in a series of murders whose naked victims are left in and along the river. Pete’s search for the phantom killer will lead him deep into London’s underbelly as the 1960s start to swing. Meanwhile Stella Reade, an art student living in bohemian Ladbroke Grove, is woken by terrifying nightmares that echo the last hours of the murdered women – all of whom have been plucked from the streets around her home. Streets where fascists and Teddy boys, migrants and anarchists chase illicit thrills with gangsters and lords. Bad Penny Blues is inspired by the ‘Jack the Stripper’ case of 1959-65, which sparked the biggest manhunt in Metropolitan Police history but was never solved. “Bad Penny Blues is the English Black Dahlia and will establish Cathi Unsworth as the First Lady of Noir Fiction.” David Peace “Cathi Unsworth has been compared to cult noirist Derek Raymond. Here she enters a pantheon of writers exploring London lowlife that extends from Patrick Hamilton and Colin MacInnes” Christopher Fowler, Financial Times “A haunting and utterly absorbing London noir that takes us to all the bright lights and dark places of the big city.” Jake Arnott