Bad Penny Blues: Fabulous French edition
The French edition of Bad Penny Blues, translated by Karine Lalechère is now available from Rivages Noir
Police Constable Pete Bradley has done one year in the force and dreams of moving up the ladder. He's assigned as an aid to CID and working a routine nightshift with his partner when they stumble across a young woman's body. She was working as a prostitute when she was strangled, her body dumped by a riverbank. His search for her killer brings him deep into Soho's underbelly.
Meanwhile Stella, a young fashion designer with a promising career ahead of her, is woken by terrifying nightmares that echo the last hours of the dead women.
Set against the background of 1960's London Bad penny Blues explores the murky world of the unsolved ‘Jack the Stripper’ murders of the 1960s in which the bodies of eight working girls were found in or along the Thames.
The killings sparked the biggest manhunt in Metropolitan Police history, but the killer was never found. In Bad Penny Blues Cathi aims not to solve the mystery, but rather, as she puts it, to “create a parallel universe in which an explanation can be offered that ties together a series of intriguing coincidences uncovered during my research.”
For information about the book in French, please go HERE
Police Constable Pete Bradley has done one year in the force and dreams of moving up the ladder. He's assigned as an aid to CID and working a routine nightshift with his partner when they stumble across a young woman's body. She was working as a prostitute when she was strangled, her body dumped by a riverbank. His search for her killer brings him deep into Soho's underbelly.
Meanwhile Stella, a young fashion designer with a promising career ahead of her, is woken by terrifying nightmares that echo the last hours of the dead women.
Set against the background of 1960's London Bad penny Blues explores the murky world of the unsolved ‘Jack the Stripper’ murders of the 1960s in which the bodies of eight working girls were found in or along the Thames.
The killings sparked the biggest manhunt in Metropolitan Police history, but the killer was never found. In Bad Penny Blues Cathi aims not to solve the mystery, but rather, as she puts it, to “create a parallel universe in which an explanation can be offered that ties together a series of intriguing coincidences uncovered during my research.”
For information about the book in French, please go HERE
Londres Noir: Fabulous French edition
The French edition of the short story collection LONDRES NOIR has just been published by the exciting Aspahalte éditions, a young publishing house dedicated to pop culture, noir fiction and the romance of the open road. Edited by Cathi, the collection was translated by Miriam Perier and features original short stories by BARRY ADAMSON, DESMOND BARRY, DANIEL BENNETT, KEN BRUEN, MAX DÉCHARNÉ, JOOLZ DENBY, KEN HOLLINGS, STEWART HOME, PATRICK McCABE, JOE McNALLY, MARK PILKINGTON, SYLVIE SIMMONS, JERRY SYKES, MARTYN WAITES, MICHAEL WARD and JOHN WILLIAMS.
For more information on the book (in French), please go HERE.
Some great pictures of the Paris launch HERE
For more information on the book (in French), please go HERE.
Some great pictures of the Paris launch HERE
Le chanteur — fabulous French edition of The Singer available now
Rivages edition of Le chanteur, translated by Karine Lalechère is available now HERE
Pocket paperback version available HERE
Both from Rivages Noir
1981: Vincent Smith meets Steve Mullin and Lynton Powell at a Sex Pistols gig in Doncaster, where he tries to kiss Sid Vicious’ bass and gets a bloody nose. With this baptism they form Blood Truth with drummer Kevin Holme. Notoriety soon follows. Riots in the audience, fighting with journalists and Vincent’s self-styled persona as The King of Nothing stoke up their reputation as the most incendiary act around.
But when Vincent falls in love with beautiful American singer Sylvana it all starts to go horribly wrong. Plagued by her jealous ex-boyfriend, gradually ostracised by the rest of the band and developing a frightening appetite for bad drugs, it takes only six months from their wedding day to Sylvana’s suicide. Vincent breaks up the band and disappears, fading into cult obscurity.
2001: Journalist Eddie Bracknell sees a video of one of Blood Truth’s performances and is hooked. Yearning for the days when music really meant something, he decides to investigate what really happened to Vincent Smith. He gets a book deal and all the right contacts, but somehow he can’t get all the different angles to fit together. Was Vincent a genius or a psychopath? A visionary or a self-obsessed junkie? Eddie knows he has a dynamite story, but to truly make his name he will have to find Vincent Smith and bring him back from obscurity in the flesh.
Punk is dead, no question. But with her novel, Cathi Unsworth provides it with the tombstone it deserves – Elisabeth Phillipe, Les Inrockuptibles
Pocket paperback version available HERE
Both from Rivages Noir
1981: Vincent Smith meets Steve Mullin and Lynton Powell at a Sex Pistols gig in Doncaster, where he tries to kiss Sid Vicious’ bass and gets a bloody nose. With this baptism they form Blood Truth with drummer Kevin Holme. Notoriety soon follows. Riots in the audience, fighting with journalists and Vincent’s self-styled persona as The King of Nothing stoke up their reputation as the most incendiary act around.
But when Vincent falls in love with beautiful American singer Sylvana it all starts to go horribly wrong. Plagued by her jealous ex-boyfriend, gradually ostracised by the rest of the band and developing a frightening appetite for bad drugs, it takes only six months from their wedding day to Sylvana’s suicide. Vincent breaks up the band and disappears, fading into cult obscurity.
2001: Journalist Eddie Bracknell sees a video of one of Blood Truth’s performances and is hooked. Yearning for the days when music really meant something, he decides to investigate what really happened to Vincent Smith. He gets a book deal and all the right contacts, but somehow he can’t get all the different angles to fit together. Was Vincent a genius or a psychopath? A visionary or a self-obsessed junkie? Eddie knows he has a dynamite story, but to truly make his name he will have to find Vincent Smith and bring him back from obscurity in the flesh.
Punk is dead, no question. But with her novel, Cathi Unsworth provides it with the tombstone it deserves – Elisabeth Phillipe, Les Inrockuptibles
Au risque de se perdre (The Not Knowing)
The French edition of The Not Knowing, Au risque de se perdre, translated by Karine Lalechère is available in pocket paperback from Rivages Noir HERE
What happens when psychopaths in the entertainment business meet psychopaths in the killing business? Set in London in the early 1990s, this is the story of movie wünderkind Jon Jackson, who has revitalised the gangster genre with his hit film Bent; Diana Kemp a young journalist on the make; and Simon Everill, a talented but troubled writer. All three have secrets that connect them, but who knows how much will only be revealed when a killer cuts between their worlds of rackety Camden Town pubs and exclusive Soho clubs, binding them in blood.
‘Unsworth has a sense of pace, growing unease, menace, terror and horror that is rare in a book for a first-time author… the best debut I’ve read for some time’ Marcel Berlins, The Times
‘
What happens when psychopaths in the entertainment business meet psychopaths in the killing business? Set in London in the early 1990s, this is the story of movie wünderkind Jon Jackson, who has revitalised the gangster genre with his hit film Bent; Diana Kemp a young journalist on the make; and Simon Everill, a talented but troubled writer. All three have secrets that connect them, but who knows how much will only be revealed when a killer cuts between their worlds of rackety Camden Town pubs and exclusive Soho clubs, binding them in blood.
‘Unsworth has a sense of pace, growing unease, menace, terror and horror that is rare in a book for a first-time author… the best debut I’ve read for some time’ Marcel Berlins, The Times
‘