Red Riding Nineteen Eighty Three

Red Riding Quartet #4

by David Peace

Nineteen Eighty Three's three intertwining storylines see the Quartet's central themes of corruption and the perversion of justice come to a head as BJ, the rent boy from Nineteen Seventy Four, the lawyer Big John Piggott - who's as near as you get to a hero in Peace's world - and Maurice Jobson, the senior cop whose career of corruption and brutality has set all this in motion, find themselves on a collision course that can only end in a terrible vengeance.

Nineteen Eighty Three is an epic tale which concluded an extraordinary body of work confirming Peace as the most innovative and remarkable new British crime writer to have emerged for years.

Genres: Crime, Fiction, Mystery, Historical Fiction, Noir, Thriller, British Literature

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

David Peace was born in 1967 and grew up in Ossett, near Wakefield. He left Manchester Polytechnic in 1991, and went to Istanbul to teach English. In 1994 he took up a teaching post in Tokyo and now lives there with his family.

His formative years were shadowed by the activities of the Yorkshire Ripper, and this had a profound influence on him which led to a strong interest in crime. His quartet of Red Riding books grew from this obsession with the dark side of Yorkshire. These are powerful novels of crime and police corruption, using the Yorkshire Ripper as their basis and inspiration. They are entitled Nineteen Seventy-Four, (1999), Nineteen Seventy-Seven (2000), Nineteen Eighty (2001), and Nineteen Eighty-Three (2002), and have been translated into French, Italian, German and Japanese.

In 2003 David Peace was named by Granta magazine as one of twenty "Best Young British Novelists." His novel GB84, set during the 1984 miners' strike, was published in 2005.

from contemporarywriters.com

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the finale in the Red Riding Quartet and none of the books are stand alone stories, so, before you think of reading this, you must first read the three preceeding novels: Red Riding Nineteen Seventy Four (Red Riding Quartet), Red Riding Nineteen Seventy Seven: Red Riding Quartet and Red Riding Nineteen Eighty: Red Riding Quartet. If you have already read those novels, then this is the dark, violent dreamscape that makes up the final novel and you will already know the themes and characters that populate the pages.

It is Friday, May 13th 1983, and we are back at Millgarth Police Station in Leeds. The Owl - Detective Chief Superintendent Maurice Jobson, is calling a police conference. Ten year old Hazel Atkins disappeared on the way home from school. Another press conference and another missing girl, joining Jeanette Garland, Susan Ridyard and Clare Kemplay. Michael Myshkin is in prison for the murder of at least one of those girls, but now his mother wishes to appeal and she asks John Piggott, a local solicitor to look into the case. As before, this novel uses the point of view of particular characters - in this book Piggott, Jobson and BJ, a rent boy we have met before and whose storyline weaves throughout the quartet from the first to last book.

These books are dark and bleak in the extreme, with themes of murder, violence, abuse and corruption. Although these books will not appeal to everybody, if you begin reading them you will have no alternative but to read to the conclusion, because they are utterly compelling once you begin. This is neither crime nor literary fiction, but a heady mix of the two, intertwining storylines along with genres to create something quite different and quite brilliant.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

'There's nothing but pain here,' he says. 'Nothing but pain.'

So, the final chapter of Peace's powerful hymn to darkness: the labyrinthine plot circles back to the beginning as, once again, we open with a police conference about a missing girl, and while some threads lead to resolutions, others remain open and unresolved.

Moving between three narrators this time, each in a self-conflicted relationship with his own sense of identity, the tension isn't quite as tightly wound as in the previous two books. The incantatory, hallucinogenic prose remains, though, adding to the atmosphere of delusion and alienation, of brokenness and depravity.

Critically, while the earlier books located themselves against a background of child-killing and the Yorkshire Ripper, the prophetic images of brutality which underpin this book are sited in the rise to power of Maggie Thatcher whose violent crusades against the unions, against the miners, against a society in which she claimed not to believe add an aura of impotence against encroaching darkness: 'If Mrs Thatcher wins, Britain's young men and women will be a lost generation, without jobs, without education.'

Although divided into four books, this quartet is really one complicated, masterful narrative that leads us on an unflinching journey through the heart of darkness: utterly uncompromising, Peace has created a piece of work as dazzling as it is nightmarish.

[Toby · Rating 4 out of 5]

The cover of my edition screams 'uncompromisingly brutal' and never a truer word could have been spoken about this book, this series, this history of modern Bloody Britain, the lives of these men and the fourteen year circling of the drain that they are all irresistably sucked towards.

If two seperate narrators in 1977 wasn't good enough for you (or confusing enough for some readers for some reason) Peace comes out with both (literary) barrels loaded offering up three minor characters from the previous books with three very distinctive narrative voices - the crooked cop and his first person account of how he came to be involved in seemingly every evil event in the Ridings for fourteen years, he puts you in the head of the disgusting slothenly glutton John Piggott with a second person tale of an investigation in to the child abductions that litter the previous three books and perhaps most intrigueingly the first person eyewitness accounts of male prostitute BJ who refers to himself only in the third person.

It's an ambitious and spectacular finale for the series with a devestating conclusion that leaves as much unspoken and unclear as it resolves. The only things that you can be sure of as the final moments approach is that the real villain of the piece is newly elected Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher and her playground bully government that gives the weak people of Britian exactly what they deserve for voting her in and that after this other noir fiction might never feel the same again such is the nature of David Peace's vision in this series.

[Black Dog Reviews · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s impossible to talk about David Peace’s 1983 without putting into context as the final installment of the Red Riding Quartet. The first three novels in the quartet (1974, 1977, and 1980) tell the stories of both the Yorkshire Ripper and a child rapist/murderer. Each novel is told from different viewpoints from the novels before. In 1983, the story is told through three viewpoints: Maurice Jobson, high ranking police officer, John Piggott, Lawyer, and BJ, male prostitute. These three have the perspective to shed partial light on the mysteries that permeate the novels.

Some of the shadowy characters from the first three books are pulled somewhat into focus in the final installment, such as Reverend Laws, whom I assume is an unrecognized serial killer who preys on the weak. The police in this series aren’t much better, physically abusing suspects to force confessions so they can pin crimes on the innocent. Arguably the only people in the series who are innocent—the children—are victimized by the lack of true justice, as it allows abusers to walk free and the wrongfully accused to molder in jail.

The quartet shows a murky and unclear world with flawed, unlikable, and corrupt people. People who are somewhat decent and try to get to the center of the corruption or decay end up ruined.

Peace is purposefully repetitive, with whole passages repeated verbatim between both novels and within a single passage. This creates a mood and ambiance within the novel, even if it doesn’t always push the plot forward. But that’s okay, since atmosphere is at least as important as the plot in this dense and dark series. He also uses run-on sentences, sometimes lasting over a page, in interesting ways.

1983 didn’t bring about a full resolution of the various plotlines, although key elements, such as the identity (or identities) of the child rapist/murderer were resolved. There are lots of loose ends in this series, and I assume this by authorial intent. For example:

I assume Eddie Dunford died at the end of 1974, but it’s never confirmed in the text. Several people are clearly haunted by his memory, but if it’s because he died or went crazy, disappeared, etc is never shown. Dunford drives a Viva throughout 1974, and there’s a mysterious old Viva in 1983. Does it belong to Leonard Marsh, son of a boogeyman, or is the Viva meant to imply Dunford is still there? Is it an echo and/or ghost from the past?

The Red Riding Quartet was adapted into a film trilogy, and I’ll have to see how the filmmakers interpreted some of Peace’s more ambivalent plot lines, and how they summed up the stories. I’ll be interested in whether or not they left plot lines dangling, or if they tied the series up neatly with a little bow. The Red Riding Quartet isn’t unlike real life. For example, look at the Kyron Harmon case in Oregon. A young child disappears from school, and nine months or so later, has yet to be found. No arrests have been made. Someone out there knows the truth, but the story isn’t resolved, and might never be.

I’d definitely recommend this series to people that enjoy crime noir and atmospheric novels, with the caveat that it’s a dark, brutal, and violent series with an open ended conclusion. It’s not going to leave you happy at the end, but it will make you think.

[Leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intense, powerful, grim, dismal, violent, vulgar, glorious fiction. The best kind of crime, the best kind of noir, the best kind of detection. Nobody is good, nobody is clean, nobody deserves sympathy or kindness or second chances.

Three viewpoints, and three point-of-view styles, of which the most illuminating was Morris Jobson: the Owl, the background man, the one there from the start. A dingy portrait of a man too weak and too self-interested to do what he knows, deeply and violently, to be right. Jumping around in time, we see him learn the truth of the disappearing little girls that occupied 1974's storyline, right at the start. He knew, and everyone else knew, and he did nothing about it. But at least he was troubled.

I said in my review of 1974 that being inside Eddie's head made me feel uncomfortably seen, that none of us could possibly say we would do anything differently in his situation, and I think the hardest part of reading Jobson's story is that I felt the same. Faced with the violent, ugly reality of the West Yorkshire Police, even knowing exactly who was abducting and murdering little girls might not be incentive enough to break away from a job that consumes everyone it touches, that forces you to make a choice: you're either in, entirely, or out for good.

Piggot's story, told in second person, is just as uncomfortable. Peace drags us into the unhealthy, unpleasant, unhappy life of a man whose body and morals are both degenerating, who feeds the body and starves the morals until he decides, like Eddie, that this is the point over which he has to hold firm. And like Eddie, he finds that his morals have led him drastically astray; and like Eddie, he discovers his purpose and his end at the dingy motel on the motorway, empty now except for the body of another missing girl...

And BJ, who has flashed in and out of the previous stories, finally gets a word in edgewise here, and what a word he gets. A boy so dissociated from life and the misery it's shown him that he can only talk about himself in the third person, who hums and buzzes on in half-rhyming Yorkshire meter (hints of Alan Moore here) and tells us everything we had already half-guessed about the ways in which the crimes of the past decade are connected, and the depths men will sink to when they want to keep secrets.

The theme of the chapter quotes and background noise in this book was the rumblings of the Thatcher election, the bubbling up of greed and fear and unpleasant selfishness that would characterise the next decade of life in England. Like the best of Cohen brothers movies, this book ends on a note that you think can't get any lower, until you realise that Mrs Thatcher has just crashed to victory, a landslide of pettiness and self-interest and grasping suspicion that has characterised the whole Red Riding quartet, and you realise that things are only going to get worse.

I'm not sure anyone can do justice to these books. The journey they take is not just of history, but of the depths of human avarice, misery, and despair. The things people will do to one another for money and power are beyond comprehension, but the things people will do to avoid the consequences are much easier to believe, because we all live with choices just like them every day. Utterly stunning, incomparable, unmatchable stuff that will stick with me for a long, long time.

[Gavin Armour · Rating 4 out of 5]

1983 (NINETEEN EIGHTY-THREE/2002; Dt. 2008): Margaret Thatchers Erdrutschsieg bei den Unterhauswahlen im Nachklang des Falkland-Krieges, die Vorboten des großen Bergarbeiterstreiks 1984/85, Post-Punk und New Romantics, der Culture Club, die IRA sprengt das Kaufhaus Harrod´s – das ist der Hintergrund von David Peace´ vierten und abschließenden Band des Red-Riding-Quartetts.

Erst berichtete uns ein Journalist von den Vorgängen in West Yorkshire, dann ein Polizist und ein Reporter, dann ein Polizist und nun sind es mit Maurice Jobson erneut ein Polizist und mit dem Anwalt John Piggott erstmals ein Jurist, die dem Leser dieser vier Bände die letzten Eindrücke aus der Hölle vermitteln. Es sind die Aufräumarbeiten, der Nachklapp, nachdem der Sturm sich gelegt hat. Der Ripper ist gefasst und gibt in etlichen Vernehmungen seine ganze brutale Weltsicht preis, die Vergangenheit ruht, wollte man meinen, nun nachdem Eddie verschwunden, Bob Fraser tot und Jack Whitehead in der Psychiatrie verschwunden ist. Und Peter Hunter, der Ermittler des dritten Bandes 1980 (NINETEEN EIGHTY/2001; Dt. 2007) und die Figur in diesem schier unübersichtlichen Reigen, die einer Lichtgestalt noch am nächsten kam, wenn auch nicht sehr nah, ist tot und vergessen. Als jedoch erneut ein Kind verschwindet, werden bei Maurice Jobson, der Eule, wie er von seinen Kollegen genannt wird, Erinnerungen wach – Erinnerungen an die Jahre 1969, 1972 und 1974, als eine Serie von Kindesentführungen und -morden West Yorkshire erschütterte. Schlechtes Gewissen regt sich bei ihm, der von allem Anfang an dabei war – bei den Ermittlungen, aber auch bei den Hinterzimmertreffen, als sich eine Melange aus Polizisten, Politikern und Unternehmern zusammentat, um sich Pfründe und Macht in der Provinz zu sichern. Er, der mitverantwortlich war für Folterungen Unschuldiger, die Verhaftung und Inhaftierung Unschuldiger, für Einschüchterung und Denunziation Unschuldiger. Und der doch nicht aus seiner Haut kann. Erst recht nicht, seit Piggott, der seine ganz eigene Verbindung zu den Vorgängen in den Jahren `69 bis `74 hat, ein Revisionsverfahren für Michael Myshkin einleitet, jenen Mann, in dessen Körper ein Kind lebt und der seit nunmehr neun Jahren in einer Psychiatrie sitzt. Jenen Mann, den Jobson und seine Adlati damals als Bauernopfer, als Sündenbock, gerade recht gekommen war. Ein Mann, für den niemand sprach – nicht einmal sein Anwalt – weil er ein Idiot, ein Schwachsinniger war, ein blöder Junge aus den Sozialbausiedlungen, um den sich niemand scheren würde, außer seiner Mutter. Und wer hört schon auf die?

Erneut greift Peace zu seinem erzählerischen Mittel aus Band zwei und lässt gleich zwei Protagonisten aus ihrer jeweils subjektiven Perspektive berichten, wobei sich Jobson allerdings eher erinnert, Piggott hingegen seinen Passionsweg, seinen Abstieg in die Hölle in der Gegenwart des Jahres 1983 erlebt – verfolgt von den Gespenstern seiner Vergangenheit, seiner eigenen Erinnerungen. So werden wir durch Jobsons Bericht in die Zeit vor den Geschehnissen des ersten Bandes, 1974 (NINETEEN SEVENTY-FOUR/1999; Dt. 2005), entführt und begreifen langsam das ganze Ausmaß dessen, was sich da in Yorkshire zugetragen hat, bekommen teilweise bestätigt, was wir bereits ahnten. Diese Männer, diese Polizisten, diese Gesetzeshüter, sind so tief in Schuld verstrickt, daß es für keinen davon noch Errettung oder gar Erlösung geben kann. Peace fügt einen dritten Handlungsstrang hinzu, der vor allem die Jahre 1975, 1976, 1977 abdeckt und uns von AF, diesem Stricher, der immer überall zugegen gewesen zu sein scheint, der immer wieder Hinweise an Dunford, an Hunter und Whitehead gegeben, der aber nie wirklich preisgegeben hat, was er weiß, berichtet wird.

So werden uns Szenen aus den Vorgängerbänden nun noch einmal geschildert, aber aus einer anderen Perspektive und das ist ein brillanter Schachzug des Autors. Da setzen sich Puzzleteile zusammen, da werden Lücken geschlossen, da werden Zusammenhänge begreiflich, die zuvor nur für Verwirrung gesorgt haben. Es entsteht ein Mosaik der Abgründigkeit. Und doch macht Peace es seinen Lesern nicht leicht, denn inhaltlich tun sich wieder neue Schichten auf, immer mehr Sedimente dessen, was in West Yorkshire wohl schon lange, sehr lange gärt – und zugleich lässt der Autor seine Strategie der sprachlichen Wiederholung geradezu eskalieren. Seitenweise werden wir wieder und wieder mit Kaskaden der immergleichen Absätze konfrontiert, manchmal um ein, zwei Worte erweitert, ergänzt. Sätze zerfasern, Absätze werden zerschnitten von Einschüben, Songtexten, Radiomitschnitten. Und im Geist der Erzählenden, allen voran in Piggotts von Alkohol und Marihuana vernebelten Hirn, machen sich die Stimmen derer breit, die längst tot, längst verloren, längst vergessen sind. Peace scheint sich nicht mehr um Verständlichkeit zu scheren, es ist ihm gleich, was wir noch begreifen können. Wir werden Zeugen einer Zerrüttung. So sehr die Ebene, auf der Maurice Jobson immer mehr offenbart, wie verkommen sein Charakter ist (und er sich dennoch wundert, daß seine Familie, Frau und Kinder, das Weite gesucht haben, obwohl er zugibt, sie zu hassen) uns einiges an Aufklärung bietet, um die Vorkommnisse der Vorgängerbände zu verstehen, so wenig lassen die Gedankenspiralen in Piggotts Kopf zu, daß wir das ganze Bild erhaschen. So gilt auch für 1983, was sich in 1977 (NINETEEN SEVENTY-SEVEN/2000; Dt. 2006) ankündigte und in 1980 bereits voll zur Entfaltung kam: Nie werden wir in diesen „Kriminalromanen“ an ein Ende gelange, zu einer Gewißheit oder einer befriedigenden Auflösung kommen. Stattdessen tun sich immer weitere Ebenen auf, immer tiefere Abgründe menschlicher Verkommenheit und immer erschütterndere Schichten von Gewalt, Verachtung und Hass.

Bei aller Wucht, aller Dringlichkeit, aller Rasanz, die Peace in seinen Abschlußroman legt – der letzte Band fällt gegenüber den Vorgängern leicht ab, wenn auch nur um Nuancen. Mag es daran liegen, daß Peace die Sache zu einem Ende bringen wollte/musste, mag es daran liegen, daß er ein wenig unentschlossen wirkt, ob er dem Publikum das ganze Bild offenbaren soll oder doch einiges im Verborgenen belässt, was einer Realität, aus der er ja trotz aller Andeutungen, aller Irrationalitäten, aller Vorahnungen der Figuren erzählt, weitaus eher entsprechen würde. So bleibt 1983, was das betrifft, leider ein wenig unentschlossen. Wo der Strang um Maurice Jobson allzu Vieles zusammenzubringen scheint – und damit allerdings wirklich Skandalöses offenbart, wenn auch im Gewande einer schnöden Verschwörungsnarration – wird die Erzählung um Piggott immer erratischer, undurchschaubarer, vielschichtiger, bis hin zum kompletten Unverständnis. Zugleich nehmen die Manierismen zu, wird das Lesen zu einer Tortur, wenn man wieder und wieder Absätze liest, manchmal drei-, viermal hintereinander, und keinen Erkenntnisgewinn erzielt. Sicher, das dürfte etwa der Gefühlslage von John Piggott entsprechen. Es entspricht der Serialität des Geschehens und jener des Schreibens, es entspricht dem sich ausbreitenden Wahnsinn, in den Spiralen des Immergleichen, der Wiederholung, gefangen zu sein, doch macht es die Lektüre weder einfacher noch erträglicher.

Dies hier sind eben die Aufräumarbeiten. Eine Dekade gelangt an ihr Ende, eine neue Zeit beginnt, wer will da schon nach hinten schauen? Maggie Thatcher erklärt, daß es so etwas wie „Gesellschaft“ nicht gäbe (there is no such thing as society – wie sie schließlich 1987 kundtat), aber sie will das Land nach vorne bringen. Wen interessieren da die Geister der 70er? Ein alternder Polizist und ein Anwalt bringen die Trümmer auf die Abraumhalde und finden dort einmal mehr die Hölle vor. Doch auch das interessiert niemanden mehr. Genau diese Atmosphäre gelingt Peace – ein Gefühl dafür, wie man hinter etwas her recherchiert, das im Grunde niemanden mehr interessiert und alle nur in ihrer neuen Entwicklung stört. De facto beschreibt Peace eine Gesellschaft, die es nicht mehr gibt. Eine Gesellschaft der totalen Vereinzelung, in der nicht mehr wirklich wichtig ist oder zählt, wen du liebst, mit wem du schläfst, wer dein Freund und wer dein Feind ist. Eine Gesellschaft der Individuen, die alle immer gegeneinander arbeiten und in der ein jeder schauen muß, wo er bleibt. Und in der die Schwächsten schon verloren haben, bevor es in ihrem Leben überhaupt losgeht. Und irgendwann, sei es in Form eines Racheengels oder eines Strichers, irgendwann kommt sie dann doch wie ein Bumerang zurück, die Vergangenheit und knallt einem voll in die Fresse. Rammt dir die Zähne in die Eingeweide und lässt dich bluten für die ungesühnten Taten. Denn einer, irgendeiner, kommt immer davon…

Re-Lektüre, Wieder-Lektüre, Neu-Lektüre [?] – es ist auch nach Jahren ein Erlebnis, David Peace Meister-Quartett zu lesen, es eröffnen sich neue Räume, es tun sich aber auch weitere Abgründe auf. Die Lektüre ist anstrengend, kaum unterhaltsam, es packt einen die nackte Depression, wenn man diesen Figuren folgt. Großartige Literatur und schlechte Laune liegen hier sehr, sehr eng beieinander. Was bleibt ist ein neues Bewußtsein davon, daß eine Wirklichkeit, die sich als Wahrheit präsentieren wollte, eine Vergangenheit, die real erscheinen will, immer umzuschreiben sind, daß nichts wahr, alles assoziativ und jederzeit neu interpretierbar ist. Es kommt darauf an, wer diese Interpretation vornimmt, an welcher gesellschaftliche Relais-Station er oder sie sitzt und welche Möglichkeiten ihm oder ihr zur Verfügung stehen, die eigene Sicht der Dinge durchzusetzen. David Peace versucht mit aller Wucht, die ihm literarisch zur Verfügung steht, dagegen anzuschreiben. Und doch bleibt am Ende nur eins – Trauer. Denn die Sieger schreiben die Geschichte und den Verlierern – die Opfer männlicher Gewalt und institutioneller Macht, die Frauen, vor allem aber die Kinder und ganz, ganz selten auch die wenigen Männer, die in Peace´ Universum darum bemüht sind, ehrlich zu bleiben und redlich zu handeln – bleibt nur, sich einen Platz in dieser Geschichte zu suchen, wo es nicht ganz so zugig, nicht ganz so kalt und rauh ist.

Und dann öffnet man die Augen, klappt das Buch zu, atmet durch und meint, einem nicht enden wollenden Albtraum entronnen zu sein. Amen.

[Phil · Rating 5 out of 5]

David Peace's "Red Riding Quartet", of which this is the final volume, is one of the most amazing and powerful works of English literature of the 21st century so far. It is a cycle of novels - literally, in that it continually explicates and rounds on itself - based on the very real horror of child abduction and murder in the wake of the Moors Murders of the 1960s and the Yorkshire Ripper's reign of terror in the 70s. Peace is local to West Yorkshire and knows in his bones the places, the people, and the fear generated by these horrible crimes. He also knows a deal about the corruption of the West Yorkshire Police, their brutality at the period, and the monumental inefficiency of their investigation of the Ripper murders...

What makes these novels so exceptional, however, is that, unlike any other 'crime genre' work I've read, they are not remotely concerned with psychology - of criminals or of police - or with police procedure (other than to emphasise the abuses of it), or with traditional 'whodunnit' tension (though there is an element of this): what Peace does is explore the human capacity for evil, its corrosive effect on the soul, its perversion of best intentions, and its creation of complicity between the best impulses and the foulest and most depraved actions, repeated over and over again.

I'm not a native of West Yorkshire (the 'Red Riding' of the overall title), but I live here now and can attest to the author's vivid evocation of place. My wife, who *is* West Yorks born and bred, found the Channel 4 TV dramatisation of three of these novels a few years back emotionally unbearable, because they literally were too close to home. And even though in a discussion I had with David Peace a little while ago he claimed to have made up or guessed at some of the characters, motivations and incidents, a friend of mine who was a local police officer during the period concerned has confirmed to me the extraordinary accuracy of Peace's knowledge of the force as it was.

In brief, this is a work of very great genius, and I cannot recommend it too highly.

[Pinko Palest · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great series, and it is a literary accomplishment too. The books are not run of the mill detective novels, having been written as stream of consciousness narratives of various characters, and with each narrator being very different to the others. Most of the leading characters are policemen or journalists and almost all of them are corrupt to varying degrees. By the end of the series, the corruption is so all pervading that going on reading is a struggle. In a sense, it is fitting that the series closes with Thatcher's re-election. She is emblematic of this. The bent coppers and the criminals would most likely have approved of everything she stood for

[Mar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me esperaba muchas más respuestas pero en conjunto han sido cuatro libros trepidantes

[Theo Austin-Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

And so it ends, in a certain sense.

Listen to William Basinski's Lamentations, Cascade, or Vivian and Ondine to get the atmosphere just right, although admittedly Peace's incantatory prose does a good enough job by itself - yet these albums bolster the experience, they make your chest swirl and your heart pang when certain passages and certain moments of certain songs cohere in a heady, devastating mix, they aid the hallucinations, they illuminate the unremitting darkness with a non-light, in an incisive blackness which brings the bones of dead children into sharp relief.

Close your eyes and listen to All These Too, I, I Love. To me it is completely synaesthetic - the swastikas on the walls, the endless 7's, the dog shit shoved through innocent family members' letterboxes, the snow beneath one's feet, 12-inch nails resting precariously on the crowns of men's heads, awaiting the hammer's blow - I can see them all, as soon as the first few seconds play, wherever I go, however pleasant the weather may be. The series, judged as a whole, is one of the greatest explications of the eternal recurrence of crime and horror and corruption and grime and shit and piss and abuse that has ever been written. Peace relentlessly exposes the complete absence of substantive justice, the absolute lack of resolution, the world as eclipsed by goodness, both ontologically and ethically. A cosmos where only a blind, cataract-ridden will can leap forth and be presumptuous enough to posit the existence of a Sun behind the endless fucking rain, the rain that cannot dilute down the blood which allows little girls with swan's wings sown in their backs to float on a sea of crimson sludge. And yet blind men and women, unaware of the machinations of subterranean men, plod forward haphazardly - they stumble toward a certain cessation of a current state of affairs, doing this all the while knowing in the back of their minds (this horrific thought, the horrific thought) that events are bound to cyclically repeat, that the circle cannot be broken in perpetuity.

Disturbing book lists abound with caricatures, where crimes, in their novel modulations (a certain limb injured in such and such a manner, an archetypal killer with perhaps one or two new traits which make them stick out ever so minutely from their fellow travellers in fiction) become laughable and carnivalesque. But Peace, with his elliptical and impenetrable darkness, so enmeshed in the true shitshow of the Yorkshire Ripper case, glaringly approximates that which is factual - it elides the ridiculous and preposterous and sinks ever deeper into the morass of the real. A tremendous work and a tremendous series, Peace has rendered a complete world in the flesh - he has done this with the aid of razors, carving his words into the chests of women. 4 LUV? There is the smugness and complacency of daily corruption which can only be momentarily halted by the heterogenous element of revelation, where the paroxysm of a madness and the instant of death brings an unreal relief.

Get tangled in the morass. Or wank yourself off in front of teenage girls in a graveyard. Same rules apply.

[John McDermott · Rating 4 out of 5]

1983 is a disturbing take of the mean streets of West Yorkshire during the time of the Ripper killings. Full of violence, perversion and corruption, there is no redemption for any of the characters within these pages.
With prose that, at times reads like poetry this is an original and unique addition to British Crime Fiction. Forming part of a quartet, in which all need to be read in order and one straight after the other to achieve the best experience, the Red Riding Quartet is a dark and bitter brew indeed.
Outstanding and gripping.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Peace’s ‘Red Riding’ quartet of books (‘1974’, ‘1977’, ‘1980’ and ‘1983’ respectively) provides us with an extremely intense, dark, brooding and menacing series of connected stories.

Set against the backdrop of Yorkshire (where Peace grew up) the books have the notorious ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ murders (1975-80) as an underlying, but almost omnipresent theme throughout.

These are hard books about hard people and hard lives with hard themes of murder, corruption, sexual obsession, sadism and then some – they are definitely not for the more faint-hearted reader.

Whilst I haven’t as yet read Peace’s ‘Tokyo’ Trilogy – the ‘Red Riding’ series of books are for me his strongest piece of work to date. Referred to by some as part of the British Noir genre, I think these books transcend those limitations. It doesn’t feel as though Peace is trying to provide us with a British re-write of Chandler or Hammett, but something quite different.

I am not one to specifically enjoy violent novels / novels containing violence per se, or for the sake purely of the violence within. Peace’s ‘Red Riding’ novels don’t glorify the violence portrayed but acknowledge it and don’t in any way shy away from it as an integral (although clearly hateful and terrifying) part of the darkest of social landscapes that he is portraying here. He is effectively holding a mirror up to some of the darkest themes and elements in a society, which although fictional – is frighteningly perhaps not in many ways that far from reality.

Whilst the UK TV adaptation of the ‘Red Riding’ books was very well produced, it somehow lost the edge that the books most definitely have. Worth watching, but as is usually the case – read the books first. All of which are consistently strong and compelling in a very gruesome and frightening way.

[Richard Wright · Rating 2 out of 5]

The last of the Red Riding Quartet, and probably the least satisfying. Despite being set in eighty-three, much of the plot transpires in the sixties and seventies, jumping back and forward like a hyperactive child, weaving through the plots of the previous books and recontextualising them. It's a gruelling, exhausting read, and while it just about makes a new plot out of tying up previous loose ends, the ride is by now familiar and strained. The characters are ruined and broken by the end, as you'd expect from reading the previous books, but it's all less satisfying and I found aspects, such as the breaking of solicitor John Piggott, manufactured and flawed. As that character takes his final actions, I read on with disbelief, not because of what he was doing, but because I just didn't find his choices credible from the way he had presented himself throughout the book. As the final part of the quartet, this is labored and unsatisfying, challenging for the wrong reasons. I finished it out of necessity, having travelled so far through the quartet that I wasn't prepared to quit, rather than because it gripped me, as the previous books did.

[ren]

i think i loved these books? feel like i've waded through hell and come out charred but relieved. best we can expect from the future

[Carole Tyrrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the final book in the Red Riding Quartet and I was anticipating plenty of tying up of loose ends and perhaps a happy ending of sorts. But I knew that in Peace’s world this wasn’t how the Quartet would end. Its strands interweave and connect briefly but in some ways there’s no ending to the pain which is much truer to life.
BJ, the rent boy from 1974, re-appears as he goes on the run with Clare Morrison after the shoot-out at the Strafford Arms. A huge cover-up which dominated 1980 and its significance is now finally explained. Remember Clare from the previous book? – officially a Ripper victim, destined to die bloodily in a dank garage. And BJ keeps running, running until he can’t run any longer.
A lawyer, Big John Piggott, agrees to take on the case of Michael Myshkin, convicted and imprisoned over an apparent confession of murdering Clare Kemplay in 1974. He soon uncovers procedural errors committed by the official police lawyer assigned to Myshkin and soon also realises that others want him to step away and leave Myshkin to his fate in prison forever. The apparent suicide of Jimmy Ashworth who originally discovered Clare’s body and was quickly and conveniently entwined with the recent disappearance of another local girl Hazel Atkins is now another case for Piggott who refuses to be put off by intimidation.
Chief Superintendent Maurice Jobson, a senior cop, who has risen through the ranks by benefitting from the mire of corruption is haunted by the death of the medium, Mandy Wymer, from 1974 and appears sickened by the extent of it all. He’s nicknamed the Owl due to his thick framed glasses and has been privy to the underworld of an apparently respectable Northern city where wrongdoers go by other names.
Badger, Dragon and the Wolf for example.
The all hide behind these aliases whilst destroying lives all around them. No-one is safe.
Jack Whitehead quietly vanishes, the increasingly sinister Revd Law comes more to the fore and the true horror of his part in the horrific death of Jack’s ex-wife is revealed.
Sometimes it was difficult to work out exactly what was going on in Peace’s nightmare world and I felt that ended to the sense of being adrift in the darkness with no light to lead you. It didn’t led to a linear narrative and I would have to re-read parts to work out what was going on but I like to be challenged by a book. I was glad that a writer had the confidence to write with such a unique voice and style and could find a publisher who would publish him. It makes you realise that your own writing can take another route and that there aren’t any boundaries. I didn’t fully understand Peace’s references to trepanning but this just added to his nightmare vision.
But there’s no happy endings even when the true heart of darkness, the true evil at the very heart of everything is finally revealed. Men in back street pubs drinking double whiskies and planning to go into the very business that they’re supposed to be stamping out and knowing that they can get away with it. They are the police and this is the North where are several characters boast ‘ We do what we want!’
There’s a release for one major character but not for another.
No-one cared. The saddest two words in the Quartet and exposes how evil flourishes and continues.
I look forward to re-reading the Red Riding Quartet again in the future.

[Andrés · Rating 4 out of 5]

[Note: This is a review of the full Red Riding Quartet]

I would like to give a 5-star rating to this series but, in the end, I can't. In two brief sentences: (1) I truly enjoyed the ride but (2) I am not sure if I liked the destination.

(1) I enjoyed the ride because, stylistically, it is very addictive. David Peace's use of the "train of thought", repetitions and small phrases is lively and top-notch. The narration has good rythm, only occasionally disrupted by the memoristic burden put on the reader, who needs to go back to remember hundreds of names, places, situations and even phone numbers... I strongly recommend to read this series on a Kindle or similar device, and use the "search" function extensively, to help with the memory. With regard to style, "1974" is better than the rest of the series, which decay a little. Maybe that is because in "1974" you are into the head of Eddie Dunford who is, without doubt, the only likable character in the whole series and surely the funniest, despite the bleak atmosphere that surrounds him.

(2) I am not sure if I liked the destination or not because there are some loose ends. Yes, the main plot is clarified, but please don't ask me "who killed X?" or "how did X know that Y was in Z?", because I could not give you a clear answer. At the end I was not really sure if David Peace broke the contract with the reader (yes, I do believe that there is a contract between author and reader, or between a movie maker and its audience; are you listening, Mr. Haneke?). Of course re-reading the series will help, and I will probably do it. For now, I will give it 4-stars…

A final recommendation: please, avoid the Channel 4 adaptation of "Red Riding" if you intend to read the books. The TV mini-series is very good but oversimplifies the plot up to the point to merge different characters into one, and I would even say that betrays the dark and nihilistic spirit of the books.

[Neil Powell · Rating 3 out of 5]

A cracking quartet of novels, but I feel a little let down by the ending to the series. It employs several clever tools to move the story along; 3 strands with 3 characters, each strand written using a different narritive style (Jobson - 1st Person, Piggott 2nd Person, BJ 3rd Person), and the way that one strand brings the story together; one set before the first novel (pre 1974), one tells the unseen tales from the end of 1974 through to the final book, and one based in the "present". These mixed writing styles and timelines might ruin the story in the hands of a lesser writer, but Peace almost manages to pull it off.

Howver, the last chapters and conclusion I found to be confusing, and left me with too many questions left unanswered Perhaps the series warrents re-reading, more pointers and clues may be spotted having come to the ending. Harrowing stuff throughout the series, and the best crime novels I have ever read

[Kaylee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is definitely the weakest of the series but it’s not bad at all. My favorite was the third book.

I read this series because of an essay in Mark Fisher’s Ghosts Of My Life where he describes the narrative and constantly dissociating from itself and becoming just pure murky water by the end. Hell he was right and thats what makes this series great. No one is good, everyone is bad, what is going on, etc. There are very few examinations of this book outside of Mark Fisher’s which is more of a thematic examination that also dives into the BBC film trio made of these and I think it’s best not too much exists of that — we were able to briefly see into a world we were never supposed to, that desperately wants to keep us out, it was never going to make sense.

Someone smarter than me has laid a timeline clearing of the series on reddit, def recommend for getting things in the right order after you read it.

Surprised this isn’t more popular but then I’m not, not only is it absolutely brutal but it is intentionally foggy, confusing, contradicting, etc. Anyways shout out Mark Fisher and David Peace.

[Nick Davies · Rating 3 out of 5]

All the aspects that I enjoyed and admired about the preceding books in the series, the dark, the visceral, the clever intertwined nature, the sense of time and place powerful, the style such a black art, such a sense of ‘why do I read bland formulaic forgettable books when there is such talent as this out there?’

But three stars. Why? Because I didn’t have a clue what was going on most of the time. The author’s determination to weave a story in painful fragments, the three main voices all male and all similarly fucked-up, the flitting around without clear signalling over similar crimes committed during a decade and a half of Yorkshire’s grim past - these all made it increasingly hard to follow. Even had I read this at one sitting, as opposed to in chunks over several days, I’m not sure I would have got more from the experience than a powerful sense this was an ambitious book that said a lot of dark things to a length that I couldn’t run with.

[Matthew Bishop · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I’d have to say that the Red Riding Quartet is probably up there with my favourite reads of all time.

David Peace, take a bow!

This is faced paced, gritty literature both in subject matter and prose style.

This instalment brings the quartet to a conclusion, there are many stories that overlap with the previous volumes and so my recommendation here is that you read them one after another. Set in the 70s and 80s with the background story of the Yorkshire ripper, these books unearth stories of crooked cops, prostitution, dirty money, murder and more.

If you are looking for gritty British Noir, this is it. Peace hits you with it square in the face. Noir as fuck. Get a copy of 1974 and start your journey….

[Louie Gibson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bloody Yorkshire

Last book of the four and it was as good as the last three. David Peace weaves in the stories and all the characters of the last 9 years and beyond bringing it all together at the end. Even tho it’s four books didn’t feel like a slog at all. The politics of the time with Thatcher, Arthur Scargill, the Troubles, the National Front etc serves a good historical backdrop.

Perfect Winter read lol. Dark, grotesque, depressing and bleak 👍👍

[Jeremy Hornik · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, I did it. Quartet finished.

Still murky, but goes a long way towards clearing up the other three. “That would’ve been good to know,” I thought more than once, as a flashback made it clear what had been done by whom in which book. Somehow, though, the bits of clarity make the entire thing no less bleak and horrifying.

Anyone know of a site that breaks it all down nice and cleanly?

[M.S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Red Riding Quartet comes to an end not with a bang...and not quite with a whimper. This strange, satisfyingly-dissatisfying finale certainly doesn't give any clear answers, but does leave you with the confidence that the answers are somewhere in the pages.

Peace's writing is a thing of beauty, and I can't praise it enough. There were absolutely times I struggled in this book - particularly with Piggott's second-person narration - and felt the style was overwhelming the narrative. In fact, sometimes I didn't follow what was happening because of the style. But the longer the book goes on, the clearer it is that the narrative really isn't the point. The corruption and the abuse and the injustice is so overwhelming that you can barely make heads nor tails of it. All that matters is the three men we're following, and their individual struggles for redemption.

But does redemption exist for men like this? Can redemption - or anything good, for that matter - exist in West Yorkshire? Through the missing girls and Margaret Thatcher and the Ripper, what is worth preserving? Perhaps there's hope in Peace's final pages, but it's just as likely that the hope goes the way of everything else in this series; six feet under.

So glad to have read these. They'll no doubt be a major source of inspiration in my own writing for years to come.

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

None of the Red Riding quartet stand well on their own - they can only really be read as a collected work. The overall theme of the enormous cost in human lives and immense suffering of hypocrisy and corruption is interesting and well developed. The books use a fascinating device of shifting point of view from one novel to the next, both in terms of character and time, to develop that theme and gradually fill in the broader story. For instance, a character seen only as an antagonist in 1974 becomes the central character from whose point of view the story is told in 1977 and then recurs in the latter two books as an important and sympathetic character. A character referred to only in a few passages of 1977 is the dominate character driving all of 1980.

The prose, in an apparent effort to be stylistic, often comes off as pretentious, repetitive, and just plain over-stuffed. Many characters are left only partially explored, the exact details of what happened to them and why is almost always left hazy and ambiguous, though the point may be that the exact details don't matter so long as we can link their fate back to the overarching theme of the cost of corruption. The series as a whole is also just depressing - in tone and in theme (with one small but significant exception partway through the final book, though the ending reverts to form).

[Nick Garbutt · Rating 4 out of 5]

The strange, haunting and ultra-violent Red Riding series is brought to an end by 1983.
The writing is hypnotic, repetitive and strangely poetic (though much parodied), and the plot is so dense and complex it is often difficult to follow. Someone has actually made an excellent stab at unravelling it on Reddit. But there is no mistaking the unrelenting bleakness of this tale of mass murder, horrific sex crimes and police corruption.
As the series unfurls Peace seems to refine his writing style so by the time he has finished he appears to have re-invented the crime thriller.
I'm not going to recommend the books because some will find them too disturbing, too violent and too explicit in their descriptions of depravity. But this series is one I'll never forget. It brought back some unpleasant memories of the days when the Yorkshire Ripper haunted the streets of my home town.

[Limecat · Rating 5 out of 5]

This finishes the quartet. I don't normally read this sort of stuff - it is uber violent and unrelentingly brutal. I wouldn't recommend it to my mother, let's put it that way.

But there's something compelling about this writer, and no matter how much I winced, I couldn't put the books down. And I guess it's also the nostalgia factor - this takes people of a certain age right back to the end of the Callaghan years to the start of the Thatcher years, when the 1970's bled into the horrible heartlessness of the 80's. A decade I am happy to forget.

These aren't fun to read, and if you can't cope with swearing then don't even bother. But his prose style is something else.

[Godzilla · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not really sure why it's taken me so long to finish this book off. It was still as pacy and exciting as the first three novels in the Red Riding Quartet.

Perhaps I was reluctant to end this roller coaster journey and was trying to prolong the enjoyment.

1983 certainly pulls all the strands together and we see other sides to characters previously introduced.

I'm left wondering what to read next, as little will compare to this...

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

This time, three different, very human narrators pick up the rhythmic chant of the narrative. Last time, I spotted a demon at the periphery. But it was probably just Mrs. Thatcher. The overall weight of the quartet is beyond noir - there is Evil up there in the North. 3 stars for each book; 4 for overall series.

[Irmak Ertuna-howison · Rating 3 out of 5]

a somewhat disappointing ending to the series even though some loose ends are tied.

[Dan Howarth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the best series I've ever read.