The Corrupted: Part One (2024)

I wanted to read this having enjoyed the serialisation of part 2 of this book on Radio 4 and I was reminded that back in the late 70s, the excellent TV drama Law and Order, also written by G F Newman, shocked the nation including me, because of its stark portrayal of corruption in the police service. Back then we were entirely unused to anything other than the cosiness of Dixon and Z-Cars and the notions of bent coppers taking bungs and getting involved in miscarriages of justice were unthinkable.

This book is set in the post-war period of austerity in East London and old time gangsters like Jack Spot and Billy Hill, who featured regularly in my child hood Daily Mirror, are being courted/challenged by the likes of the Kray and Richardson gangs. Extortion and protection rackets are rife and the use of violence ensures that everyone, from simple shop-keepers to owners of posh gambling clubs, pays up. Newman mixes fact with fiction and we meet the real life Lords Goodman and Justice Melford Stevenson and corrupt politicians like Jack Profumo and Tom Driberg, all on the make and/or engaged in illicit sex. They all socialise at drinking clubs and gaming tables and rub shoulders with gangsters and the likes of the ghastly DCI Ken Drury who ensures that he makes a living off the pimps, p*rnographers and racketeers he protects; his pension he calls it. Later we are are introduced to the fictional Detective Constable Fred Pyle, later to appear in Law and Order played by the great Derek Martin, who having learned all the tricks from Drury, goes on to pervert the course of the law in cahoots with a greasy lawyer, the equally excellent Ken Campbell.

I liked this book, partly because I was reminded of those early mornings, the Daily Mirror propped up against the corn flakes, and my fascination, mixed with horror at the gruesome, crime-laden scandals of the 60s and 70s. In the reading I reminisced about places like Bethnal Green and Stepney and for me much of the enjoyment came from my fondness for East London.

Newman's writing is deceptively easy and although some may find the 'Gor Blimey Guv'nor' argot a bit wearying, there is a glossary for non-co*ckerneys.

This book stands by itself as a really absorbing crime novel, but it is also an engaging social history of a time and place long gone. A ripping yarn, as they say.

Interesting.

I caught some of BBC Radio 4's serialisation of this and, on the basis of what I heard, bought Parts 1 and 2 as a holiday read. I am going to start reading the second part but with less enthusiasm than I had at the start of Part One.
In its writing style The Corrupted reminded me of No Mean City, a similar 'kitchen-sink' view of small-time villains who break the law because of their disregard for it. There's nothing they have that the law protects so why should they be bound by it?
The first half of the book works well, once you get used to the style, which, like No Mean City, uses the language of the streets. However, the author's propensity to show and tell leaves no room for the reader's imagination and soon begins to pall.
As far as the story goes, in the last third the narrative degenerates into a string of raids and counter-raids of extraordinary violence. In this period the impressionable and gay Brian attaches himself to his psychopathic uncle Jack when there doesn't appear to be any motive to do so. The raids that Brian and Uncle Jack embark on have the aim of dethroning the Krays as kings of the underworld. Not surprisingly, they culminate in Brian suffering a near-fatal beating. When he wakes in hospital under the gaze of an angelic female nurse he is miraculously 'cured' of his gayness. I found this both unbelievable and distasteful. The upshot is that last third of the book undermines the credibility of what goes before.
One of the interesting features of the radio serialisation was the involvement in the story of real-life characters like the MP Tom Driberg, the Profumo affair's Stephen Ward and actor and Kray Brothers' associate John Bindon. Sadly, the book's attachment to the real world is less secure.