Without the Moon

May 23, 2016
Two series of ghastly murders of prostitutes, not unlike the infamous Jack the Ripper killings, entwine this gloomy historical novel set during the London Blitz, which Unsworth (Weirdo) based on two real cases from 1942. Her fictional Det. Chief Insp. Edward Greenaway of Scotland Yard's Murder Squad heads both investigations, which take him through the bombed city's teeming underbelly of thieves, gangsters, pimps, and sex workers. After solving the first murders too late to save the final victim, a guilt-ridden Greenaway is immediately faced with a copycat killer. The second case is all the more puzzling given the similarities not just of the murders but of the suspects. The story, set in two parts, becomes quite fragmented, making it difficult to empathize with any of the characters. Few of them, aside from Greenaway, develop any real fullness, and those who do flit out of the narrative for much too long before reappearing. Potentially colorful story lines, such as the young boy Bobby learning his newfound criminal and sleight-of-hand trade at Soapy Larry's barbershop, are given short shrift. The atmosphere is the only star here. Unsworth transports readers into the ruined streets of a blacked-out city as Londoners feel their way through the rubble with only their dim torch beams to guide them. There are nice touches of noir, but as a genre novel, this work is shallow and disjointed.

May 1, 2016
Getting murdered on London's darkened streets during the Blitz seems a particularly noirish way to die: watching for bombs from the sky, who remembers to look for the knife in a soldier's hand? Based on the real-life case of Gordon Cummins, the Blackout Ripper, who killed four women in 1942, Unsworth's novel draws on the facts but layers the story vividly with the texture of the timesbone-weary Londoners, their upper lips not so stiff as all that; rubble-strewn streets; and that sense of despair that was the breeding ground for the film noir that would blossom in the postwar period. At the center of it all is DCI Edward Greenaway, a product of the streets himself, only recently promoted to the Murder Squad, a man who can't get his head around the ugly end of a woman who had managed to survive Christ knows how many air raids before she ended up dead in a shelter on a night when there were no bombs. With a full cast of vivid secondary characters, from prostitutes to psychics, this is a terrific mood piece and a fine wartime thriller.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)