‘The Unblemished’ is far more clearly a genre novel than its predecessor ‘London Revenant’, something that works considerably to its advantage. Here, Williams is stuffing all the psychogeographical observations on what London looks and smells like into a context where it does not feel like a distraction because the complex narrative has a single focus and moves clearly in a particular direction. Williams also gives us the satisfactions of genre – the sudden reversals, the moment where the heroine has had enough and kicks serious butt, the awful revelations that break your heart but seem entirely fair. This is an intelligent book that appeals to the unpleasant 12 year old in all of us.
Williams starts with a series of ominous events – a young woman is pursued and raped by demented ghouls; a photographer finds himself trapped in an empty London that draws him to a dark house; a murderous thug devotes himself to a long-hidden serial killer. Out of the corner of their eyes, Williams’ characters gradually realise that not all is well; a child, or what seems to be a child, is chewing something that is not a lollipop and nihilist thugs adapt to new circumstances by having a dentist radically alter their bites. The truth, inasmuch as it ever becomes even slightly comprehensible, lies in the distant past and in bizarre versions of biology – when things fall apart, it is in misery and degradation as much as in more standard versions of apocalypse.
This is a book which dwells on the staggeringly unpleasant, but never quite to psychotic excess – the precision
of Williams’ language means that he never has to dwell on his viler images. He eventually shows us the monsters, but lets us avert our gaze as quickly as we can manage; even though in the end what he offers us is a vision of despair and corruption, he allows us and his central characters moments of personal triumph and moral grandeur, and one of the very worst things he shows us is nonetheless a consequence of love.
