We are forewarned about the Charles by those dead-hand words on the cover: "An Inspector Christy Kennedy Mystery". Its author has pretensions towards a series here, and, who knows, maybe even a TV. Tragic, because I Love The Sound of Breaking Glass makes for pitifully thin pickings.

The Branson-alike Peter O’Browne, managing director of Camden Town Records, has turned up missing. His credit cards were in Dorset on Saturday and his house burned down Sunday, but of the man himself there is no sign. Call in Camden copper Kennedy to probe the man’s business and private life, the petty rivalries of former friends and partners he fucked-over in the climb to the top. One of them did for him, and the resolution is so ludicrous it makes your head spin.

The only thing more criminal than the monotonous plotting is Kennedy himself. Struck from the same mould as a dozen and one others, he clearly got last dibs on endearing character quirks: a passion for tea and a grindingly tedious knowledge of The Beatles are Morse-Lite. And his relationship with journo-girlfriend-cum-sidekick ann rae (no, really, just like kd lang) stretches our own relationship to breaking point. This book reads like it hasn’t been even been sniffed at by an editor. Toss in a chart-load of strained metaphors, lack-lustre anecdotes and witty dialogue so wooden you’ll choke ("Fuck you too!" "Oh they’re not that bad, sir. Though Bono may be slightly misguided..."), and what you have is a book that "one of Britain’s best known music promoters and agents" should never have written let alone have had published.

Faithless, while far from perfect, is considerably better. It’s the eighties. London is a yuppie paradise and the charts chocka with fresh faced electro-pop. Jeff played tenor sax in a band until they sacked him. Now he sells music rather than makes it. In a Central London record shop. But he remembers how, towards the end of their time together, the band drunkenly burned down a country cottage and maybe even killed a girl called Frank.

But Frank isn’t dead. And nor is Ross, ex-band mate and now something of a hot property on the art school synth-and-withered-arm circuit. And what would it do to a burgeoning pop career if anyone was to find out about that incendiary incident? And would there be money in it for an ex-sax player and a girl called Frank?

Williams’ fiction is not overburdened by plot, preferring instead a freewheeling drive through the fancy-pant neon-pretensions of Thatcher-Pop. Unlike Charles, he drops names with authority, with a real feel for place and period. The grime and fakery of this London, unlike the tourist Camden of Breaking Glass, is palpable. When he writes about the bloke "in a nasty flecked suit and with a nasty widow’s peak hair style" who would come into the shop each week to check out what the papers were recommending ("the new one from Peter Gabriel or Orange Juice or Brian bloody Eno"), you know exactly what he means.

The book is slight (and that despite arson, blackmail and murder) and at only just over 150 pages, Williams knows when not to outstay his welcome. His prose is sharp, acidic and funny – something Paul Charles can only marvel at.

Ultimately Faithless is perhaps a little too pacey and frothed-up to do anything really significant, but its evocation of a time when synthisiers were cool, albums invariably came on 12" vinyl, and you could still buy Sounds and Record Mirror is impressive. If only Paul Charles hadn’t nabbed that really cool title first.