The Invisible Ones is Stef Penney’s follow up to her Costa Award (nee Whitbread Award) winning debut, The Tenderness of Wolves.  While The Tenderness of Wolves took us to the 1860s and the Canadian wilderness, The Invisible Ones takes us back to the Britain of the 1980s, and to the gypsy community.  The family at the heart of the tale are the Jankos, a clan with a history of tragedy that would rival the Kennedys.  An unknown disease has taken the lives of several members, and traffic accidents account for still more.  They are outcasts squared; pushed to the margins of a community that itself inhabits the fringes of society.  Their troubles are exacerbated then, when the protagonist, PI Ray Lovell, is tasked with finding Rose Janko, missing for seven years since leaving her husband and child behind.  As Lovell asks questions, it slowly becomes apparent that the Janko family is as familiar with secrecy as it is with tragedy.

The Invisible Ones is strong from the offset, opening with Ray regaining consciousness in hospital, his memory in tatters and his ability to communicate severely damaged.  The effect is reminiscent of the beginning of Stephen King’s Misery, creating a mood of menace and paranoia that endures throughout the book.  Having said this, Penney counterbalances this in the finest Chandleresque style, using Ray as first person narrator, puncturing the bleakness with self-deprecating wit.
As the leading man, Ray fits this modern noir tale like a glove.  He has a well-intentioned bent for romantic self-destruction; unfailingly honest about his actions where lies would be preferable, the better part of his nature is regularly betrayed by the worse.  Tormented by the failure of his marriage, he utilises his professional skills against his estranged wife in behaviour which is as unethical as it is doomed to failure.

Complex and intriguing a lead as Ray is, Penney breaks with one of the genre’s most established traditions by spreading the work of narration across two characters.  The other narrator is JJ, an awkward adolescent who is, to a certain extent, the Janko family’s sole hope for the future.  Despite his tender years, he is the best educated of the Jankos, having enjoyed a gorjio (non-Romany) education.  He also marries a childlike innocence with the cynicism of an adult; he is not always aware of the detail of the adult relationships around him, but he knows enough to give him a healthy mistrust of anything he is told about them.

Just as Penney has shown herself adept at writing about places without first hand knowledge, here she shows a comparable skill with character; it is a rare thing indeed for any author to create one such plausible protagonist of the opposite gender, much less two.

While the two lead characters are strong, the use of two narrators has a greater benefit.   By placing one narrator inside the gypsy community and one outside, Penney is able to examine gypsy life in a balanced fashion which avoids being either judgmental or didactic.  Indeed, it is a shame Penney wasn’t on hand to consult on a certain Channel 4 documentary on the subject.

Perhaps the greatest strength of The Invisibles Ones, however, is the blood motif.  References to blood pepper the narrative, from the black blood of pure Romany gypsies, to the recurring illness afflicting the Janko family, to the lingering possibility of death to be found at the end of Ray’s search for Rose Janko, and indeed to a shocking discovery which is critical in signposting the ending.  The overall effect serves to fill the novel with menace, while also enhancing the family drama at its heart.

Penney’s use of such lofty devices ensures her place at the literary end of crime fiction.  She sits at the opposite pole to blood and guts mystery writers such as Mickey Spillane, focussing less on plot than on mood and character.  As such, readers seeking a pedal-to-the-metal thriller should steer clear.

Such reservations aside, The Invisible Ones is the product of a great intellect.  It is a noir family saga with compassion and a social conscience, and stands up not just as a crime yarn but as a complex work of fiction.  It also confirms for us that Stef Penney is no one-hit wonder.  Make no mistake, there is plenty more where this came from.

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