THREE MORE NOVELS ON CRIME IN LONDON

Stratton’s War Laura Wilson (2008) In the summer of 1940, the body of silentmovie star Mabel Morgan is found impaled on railings beneath her flat in London’s Fitzrovia. The coroner decides it is suicide but DI Ted Stratton is not so sure. His investigations lead him into a world of Soho gangs and wartime spy rings, and unearth some truths which are uncomfortably close to home. The first of Laura Wilson’s ‘Stratton’ novels is a stylish and well-written thriller. A Commonplace Killing Siân Busby (2014) London in the aftermath of the Second World War is brilliantly evoked in this atmospheric crime novel which opens with the discovery of a woman’s body amid bombed-out ruins. DI Jim Cooper makes his way slowly but doggedly towards the truth about the body found on his patch while we, the readers, learn more of what led the woman to her fate. The reality behind this supposedly commonplace killing is movingly revealed. Without the Moon Cathi Unsworth (2016) Based on the real-life series of ‘Blackout Ripper’ killings in 1942, Unsworth’s noir novel summons up the hidden underworlds of wartime London, where prostitutes and pimps rub shoulders with spivs and soldiers, in rich, convincing detail. DCI Edward Greenaway, once of the Flying Squad, is more used to the world of organised crime than he is to the seemingly random brutality of the serial killer. Nevertheless, he is determined to bring his man to justice.