PRETTY VACANT: A History of Punk by Phil Strongman

Powerfully narrated and phenomenally well-informed, Strongman’s book is less about punk as a street-level cultural movement than an epic account of its leading figures. The Sex Pistols, Malcolm McLaren, Vivienne Westwood, the Clash and the rest all feature against a backdrop of venues such as the 100 Club and the Roxy in London, and CBGB in New York. He brings the story up to date with the 2006 commodification of punk at Selfridge’s, 30 years down the line, but the most memorable moment is the death in 1978 of Nancy Spungen, Sid Vicious’s girlfriend, supposedly stabbed by Sid (the bass player with the Sex Pistols) in the Chelsea hotel in New York. Strongman makes a convincing case that Sid didn’t do it, and claims she was murdered by a bit-part actor and drug dealer named Rockets Redglare (now dead himself), who, in turn, then killed Sid by providing him with an unexpectedly strong dose of heroin.

(Orion £12.99). PB

THE BOOK THIEF by Markus Zusak

For Death, the narrator of Zusak’s novel, “War is like the new boss who expects the impossible.” He certainly has his work cut out for him as the second world war progresses, but he still manages to follow the fortunes of Liesel Meminger, a young German girl who passes the war years playing football, stealing books and protecting a Jew who has taken refuge in her cellar. By setting his novel in war-torn Germany, Zusak ploughs an unusual furrow, but the harrowing background is undermined by an almost unbearable tweeness, as when Liesel and the Jew bond over the building of a snowman. Far from being the grim reaper, Zusak’s narrator is an objectionably sentimental old thing.

(Black Swan £7.99). IC

AFFLUENZA by Oliver James

Sam is a New York stockbroker who earns £20m a year and who will inherit a further billion when his father dies — but he still isn’t happy, poor man. Sam is a case history in James’s study of how money-madness and status-anxiety decrease our quality of life. James takes on some worthwhile targets as he diagnoses the crassness of modern existence, from Americanisation (with the sales of American sports clothing as a neat barometer of social decline) to new Labour, but much of what he has to say is rather obvious, and the glib, high-concept, gimmicky nature of the book — with the Affluenza virus spreading, and James offering vaccines against it — is a symptom of the same culture that he is attacking. Erich Fromm and Richard Layard have made the same points far bette.

(Vermilion £8.99). PB

WASH THIS BLOOD CLEAN FROM MY HAND by Fred Vargas

Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg is an unconventional Parisian police commissaire in pursuit of a serial killer whose crimes have not only occurred over a period of 60 years (between 1943 and 2003) but have also included some committed after the murderer had supposedly been consigned to his grave. The killer, who would be an octogenarian if he is indeed still alive, is certainly sprightly enough to frame Adamsberg for one of the murders and force him into a complex strategy to clear his name. Vargas’s thriller has been garlanded with prizes, and those who like their crime fiction offbeat and filled with enigmatic Gallic philosophising will enjoy it. Fans of more traditional detective stories, however, will find themselves waiting for a convincing explanatory twist in the plot that never really arrives.

(Vintage £6.99). NR

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