I began my freelance career as a travel writer, though I now also write about drinks. While living in London I worked for a while at the men’s magazine, Mayfair, and around that time went out for several months with a woman who was a stripper. I didn’t know that when we met, so judged her by her personality not her profession. One of the magazine’s models was murdered, and one of the staff questioned by police. He was totally innocent. I wanted to write the kind of book I like reading, bringing together those two storylines to create a fictional version of a very real part of London life.
I knew the author when I worked for his literary agent in London, and this is a fascinating and frightening look at the London crime world of the Kray Twins. They ruthlessly ruled parts of London, including the East End, and was an essential background re-read when I wrote my own London crime novel. I was trying to show behind the scenes of the world of striptease, but this book is a reminder of what’s behind even that behind-the-scenes world. I used to send a 6-monthly royalty cheque to their mother as their share for co-operating with the book, which is why it’s so authentic.
The classic, bestselling account of the infamous Kray twins, now a major film, starring Tom Hardy.
Reggie and Ronnie Kray ruled London's gangland during the 60s with a ruthlessness and viciousness that shocks even now. Building an empire of organised crime that has never been matched, the brothers swindled, extorted and terrorised - while enjoying a glittering celebrity status at the heart of the swinging 60s scene, until their downfall and imprisonment for life.
This is an obvious follow-on from my first choice, a gritty fictionalised version of the kind of world the Kray Brothers moved in. It features the gangster Harry Starks, who is both a porn king and a sociology graduate, and has one of those great openings that grips you from the start:
"You know the song, don’t you?" “There’s nobusiness like showbusiness.” Harry gets the Ethel Merman intonation just right as he heats up a poker in the gas burner.
How can you not read on, albeit a little nervously?
The cult bestseller that launched Jake Arnott as one of the most exciting new voices of the decade - 'A gangster novel every bit as cool, stylish and venomous as the London in which it's set' (Independent on Sunday)
'I'll tell you what happens now,' Harry says, reading my mind. 'You can go now. We're quits. You don't talk to anybody about anything. You've had a taste of what will happen if you do.'
Meet Harry Starks: club owner, racketeer, porn king, sociology graduate and Judy Garland fan. To be in his orbit is to be caught up in the…
I didn’t know what to expect from this first crime novel written by J.K. Rowling using a pseudonym – and all credit to her for selling the book without revealing she had written it. It would have been a success whoever the author was, though, as it introduces a truly original and very real private eye in Cormoran Strike. His relationship with his female assistant is also true-to-life, as is the London they inhabit. It’s deftly plotted and also manages to be funny, quite the writing achievement.
'The Cuckoo's Calling reminds me why I fell in love with crime fiction in the first place' VAL MCDERMID
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Now a major BBC drama: The Strike series
When a troubled model falls to her death from a snow-covered Mayfair balcony, it is assumed that she has committed suicide. However, her brother has his doubts, and calls in private investigator Cormoran Strike to look into the case.
Strike is a war veteran - wounded both physically and psychologically - and his life is in disarray. The case gives him a financial lifeline, but it comes at a personal cost: the…
I absolutely loved this book, set in the London of the 1960s. It starts with the murder of a prostitute and takes you into the shady world of Soho with its drugs and clubs, its swingers and its singers. A young PC is assigned to work with the CID to catch the killer, as he found the body. The writing is vivid and it appeals as the murder, though central, is only part of a broader picture of the London of that era.
A gripping crime novel inspired by the "Jack the Stripper" killings in 1960s London.
Bad Penny Blues is the latest gripping crime fiction from Cathi Unsworth, London's undisputed queen of noir. Set in late 1950s and early 1960s London, it is loosely based on the West London "Jack the Stripper" killings that rocked the city. The narrative follows police officer Pete Bradley, who investigates the serial killings of a series of prostitutes, and, in a parallel story, Stella, part of the art and fashion worlds of 1960s "Swinging London," who is haunted by visions of the murdered women.
I couldn’t compile a London list without including Sherlock Holmes, the granddaddy of all London detectives. This is the book in which he makes his debut, using his detective and deductive skills to help investigate the death of a man in an abandoned house on Brixton Road. It’s a London – and style of story – unlike my other choices but it’s good to take a step back to an earlier era when crime, and the telling of it, was the same but different. I had to leave out some good crime writing to squeeze this one in, and long may the books keep on coming. To paraphrase Samuel Johnson: "A man who is tired of London crime writing is tired of life."
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet is the literary debut of the world's most famous fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, introduced by Iain Sinclair with notes by Ed Glinert in Penguin Classics.
Convalescing in London after a disastrous experience of war in Afghanistan, Dr John Watson finds himself sharing rooms with his enigmatic new acquaintance, Sherlock Holmes. But their quiet bachelor life at 221B Baker Street is soon interrupted by the grisly discovery of a dead man in a grimy 'ill-omened' house in south-east London, his face contorted by an expression of horror and hatred such as Watson has…
Liz is Nicola. Nicola is a stripper. And a stripper is about to die. When Liz Pendle moves from the north of England to go to university in London, her life is about to change in more ways than she can imagine. Persuaded by her flatmate Zuzzi that stripping is an easy way to make money to pay off her student loan, Liz is soon taking her clothes off in some of London’s seediest pubs and clubs. But when a stripper is found murdered, Liz is lured even further into this secret world.
I have been writing for many years, and my main preference is political thrillers with criminal overtones. I first became interested in politics when I worked at several political conferences in the 60’s and 70’s. I have been involved in several criminal cases, including my own, and within my family, I have a nephew in the police force. For many years I have had the opportunity to mix with the upper tiers of society as well as the criminal classes and this has given me great insight into creating my characters and plots.
Pete West, a political columnist, travels to Prague to find a missing diplomat, later found murdered. He attempts to discover more about a cryptic note received from the diplomat and is immediately entangled in the secret Bilderberg Club’s strategy to form a world federation.
Pete meets a Czechian agent who wants asylum. She has a murdered EU Commissioner’s diary containing clues to the civil unrest planned by the club, encrypted in algebraic chess notations. West seeks answers and links up with retired MI6 officer Tosh. While escaping would-be captors, they decode enough chess moves to reveal the anarchy of the…
Pete West, a political columnist, travels to Prague to find a missing diplomat, later found murdered. He attempts to discover more about a cryptic note received from the diplomat and is immediately entangled in the secret Bilderberg Club’s strategy to form a world federation.
Pete meets a Czechian agent who wants asylum. She has a murdered EU Commissioner’s diary containing clues to the civil unrest planned by the club, encrypted in algebraic chess notations. West seeks answers and links up with retired MI6 officer Tosh. While escaping would-be captors, they decode enough chess moves to reveal the anarchy of the…
