Bad Penny Blues by Cathi Unsworth
Most crime fans will have heard of Bad Penny Blues by Cathi Unsworth and quite a few of you will have read it.
I brought it back from Blighty with me after my summer school stint and read it last week, while out in the Polish boonies.
It's already been highly praised by the likes of Ray Banks and David Peace and guess what? Yes, it lives up to the hype.
In fact it's better than I thought it would be.
Brilliantly written, of course, but also very warm and very, very moving.
Brilliantly written, of course, but also very warm and very, very moving.
4 comments:
I'll add it to the list feller.
I personally didn't think much to it at all. I suppose I had high expectations because of comparisons to Ellroy's Black Dahlia. And I have to be honest, I don't think it's anywhere near in the same class. I didn't find the characterisation of any of the police at all believable. I am not sure if there is anyone who agrees with me, so I'm probably wrong.
It was the Ellroy/Peace comparisons that put me off a bit. I find the demon poodle's tricksy-gimicky writing tiresome after a while. And I'm not a big fan of David Peace's prog-rock prose either, so I was pleasantly suprised to find that it was a proper book, with a proper story and about proper people.
I agree with you that (especially in the case of The Big Nowhere) Ellroy's persistant use of the vernacular becomes rather tiresome to read. But I think it's the overall pathos he infuses the prose with that elevates him above the mediocre. By comparison I thought Bad Penny Blues was rather prosaic and predictable. For me, there was just nothing extra-ordinary about the writing itself that takes it out of the mainstream novel bracket. I didn't get any depth to it at all.
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