Police Constable Pete Bradley has 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.

Sixties London explodes in all its ferocious colour, with fascists and Teds, migrants and hippies living in close proximity. Bad Penny Blues is a tender paean to the city, a novel with a twisted mystery at its heart.