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Factory Series #3
How the Dead Live
“A sulphurous mixture of ferocious violence and high-fl own philosophy.”— Prospect The third novel in the acclaimed Factory crime series sees Derek Raymond’s nameless detective leave London for a remote village, where he’s meant to be investigating the disappearance of a local doctor’s wife. A fitting successor to classic noir writers such as Jim Thompson and David Goodis, with an introduction by Will Self. High-profile fans include Ian Rankin and James Sallis. Robin Cook was born in 1931. He reinvented himself as Derek Raymond and died in London in 1994.
213 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
13 people are currently reading
703 people want to read
About the author
Derek Raymond
19 books138 followersAka Robin Cook.
Pen name for Robert William Arthur Cook. Born into privilege, Raymond attended Eton before completing his National Service. Raymond moved to France in the 50's before eventually returning to London in the 60's. His first book, 'Crust on its Uppers,' released in 1962 under his real name, was well-received but brought few sales. Moving through Italy he abandoned writing before returning to London. In 1984 he released the first of the Factory Series, 'He Died With His Eyes Open' under the name Derek Raymond. Following 'The Devil's Home On Leave' and 'How The Dead Live' he released his major work 'I Was Dora Suarez' in 1990. His memoirs were released as 'The Hidden Files'.
Pen name for Robert William Arthur Cook. Born into privilege, Raymond attended Eton before completing his National Service. Raymond moved to France in the 50's before eventually returning to London in the 60's. His first book, 'Crust on its Uppers,' released in 1962 under his real name, was well-received but brought few sales. Moving through Italy he abandoned writing before returning to London. In 1984 he released the first of the Factory Series, 'He Died With His Eyes Open' under the name Derek Raymond. Following 'The Devil's Home On Leave' and 'How The Dead Live' he released his major work 'I Was Dora Suarez' in 1990. His memoirs were released as 'The Hidden Files'.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 79 reviews
June 12, 2015
Raymond's mouthpiece for his disgust with Thatcher-era London, the Unnamed Detective, is plucked out of his usual environs and is sicked on a small, country village where the wife of an elderly, aristocratic doctor has gone missing. Lucky for the Unnamed Detective - whose favorite activities are career suicide and pissing people off - even bucolic, sleepy hamlets are ripe with moral decay and grotesques who feed off of flesh and money. It only takes the UD a brief visit with the skeletal Dr. Mardy in his rotting Gothic mansion to know that something seriously sinister is afoot, a fact that becomes glaringly clear once the UD is warned off by the town constable, the mayor - who happens to be a local real estate tycoon - and local heavies operating out of a seedy gambling house. Unlike most police procedurals, Raymond has little interest in step-by-step investigations, and instead focuses the UD's attention on unveiling the hypocrisies of those he encounters and with dedicating an unhealthy amount of his soul to understanding the misfortunes of those he considers the real "victims."
As Will Self (an author I greatly admire who ganked this title for his own masterpiece) points out in his introduction to How the Dead Live, the departed - especially the wrongfully murdered - weigh heavy on Derek Raymond's take on the world. This is not your Agatha Christie murder mystery. Raymond's novel is rude, violent, perverse and mostly hopeless. The only silver lining in How the Dead Live is that maybe we're not all heartless lizards and that we can care about other people, even if it is usually already too late to do any good.
As Will Self (an author I greatly admire who ganked this title for his own masterpiece) points out in his introduction to How the Dead Live, the departed - especially the wrongfully murdered - weigh heavy on Derek Raymond's take on the world. This is not your Agatha Christie murder mystery. Raymond's novel is rude, violent, perverse and mostly hopeless. The only silver lining in How the Dead Live is that maybe we're not all heartless lizards and that we can care about other people, even if it is usually already too late to do any good.
April 13, 2024
This is the third novel in the Factory Series featuring the Unnamed Detective Sergeant.
He is dispatched to a remote village in Wiltshire by the “voice”, the Deputy Commander who assigns the Unnamed Detective Sergeant his cases by telephone.
A prominent local woman has disappeared or at least no one has seen her in over six months.
The local police inspector has taken a spectacular disinterest in this missing persons case but a Chief Constable from the region has reported it to Serious Crimes in London.
Serious Crimes is headed by the Unnamed Detective’s nemesis, Chief Inspector Charlie Bowman.
Bowman refers the case to Unexplained Deaths or A14 because there is no actual reported death –just a suspicion of one.
Bowman delights in getting the Unnamed Detective Sergeant assigned to investigate a crime out in the “sticks”.
This becomes almost a quasi-Sherlock Holmes/Philip Marlowe tale as concocted by Robert Louis Stevenson and H. P. Lovecraft.
Probably as much as a third of this novel is filled with the morbid ruminations of the trouble bound, not-quite-overly-emotional Unnamed Detective Sergeant.
We learn of his childhood growing up in London during the Second World War when the Germans were dropping bombs on British citizens.
We meet his sister in a series of devastatingly sweet and moving passages that convey the importance of looking after one’s loved ones and never forgetting the duties and responsibilities that love of blood kin demand.
There are long, long passages of melancholic self-reflection that are unlike anything I’ve ever read in the crime-thriller genre.
Yet it’s hardboiled as well and violent at times as are all of the entries in the Factory Series.
I would advise anyone interested in reading this series to start with the first entry and read each novel in the sequence in which they were published.
My work tells me that our history is over, we are all over. I know that in my work I am supposed to represent a future, but I find that impossible when I look back at the past.
(pages 11 – 12)
And how will we describe our own loss and pain to others, once we have passed to join a dead father by a dead fire in the darkness of a country that has gone?
(page 12)
But the homeless, made invisible in their misery by the frozen night, were folk that in my work I knew much too well; the ruins of their youth framed their shrieks. They screamed and robbed each other for any money or drug that would release them from their rags and bed of cement, sang, droned and wandered through these lost parts of the city for as long as hell lasted for them… (pages 25 – 26)
What maddened me sometimes with my work at A14 was that I could not get any justice for these people until they were dead …Yet no murder is worse to find than a body dead of cold against a door.
(page 26)
”I tell you I’m standing in for [Inspector Kedward]”, he said neutrally. “Nobody said you was coming, otherwise doubtless he’d have waited here to see you.”
“Nobody said I was coming”, I said, “because I didn’t say so myself, I like it better that way. I find detective work depends on being sudden at times and that’s me, do you see? Sudden.”
(page 35)
”None of us are ever all right”, I said. “We’re all just waiting for the death express.”
(page 98)
There are times when I feel alone in the face of our society, its hatred and madness, its despair and violence.
To go on drawing my pay, to go on living in Acacia Circus, to go on acting on my own, just to go on at all, I have to be very careful. I feel the edge of the precipice with every step I take and have to be most particular how I tread; the path isn’t solid, and under it is the mist and that vile slide towards a bottomless death.
I am a minor figure for whom no god waits. The state that pays me laughs at me; my own people at work find me absurd.
I dream across the altar of my past, have many enemies.
(page 134)
Death is its own best friend, and our dreams know it.
(page 141)
He is dispatched to a remote village in Wiltshire by the “voice”, the Deputy Commander who assigns the Unnamed Detective Sergeant his cases by telephone.
A prominent local woman has disappeared or at least no one has seen her in over six months.
The local police inspector has taken a spectacular disinterest in this missing persons case but a Chief Constable from the region has reported it to Serious Crimes in London.
Serious Crimes is headed by the Unnamed Detective’s nemesis, Chief Inspector Charlie Bowman.
Bowman refers the case to Unexplained Deaths or A14 because there is no actual reported death –just a suspicion of one.
Bowman delights in getting the Unnamed Detective Sergeant assigned to investigate a crime out in the “sticks”.
This becomes almost a quasi-Sherlock Holmes/Philip Marlowe tale as concocted by Robert Louis Stevenson and H. P. Lovecraft.
Probably as much as a third of this novel is filled with the morbid ruminations of the trouble bound, not-quite-overly-emotional Unnamed Detective Sergeant.
We learn of his childhood growing up in London during the Second World War when the Germans were dropping bombs on British citizens.
We meet his sister in a series of devastatingly sweet and moving passages that convey the importance of looking after one’s loved ones and never forgetting the duties and responsibilities that love of blood kin demand.
There are long, long passages of melancholic self-reflection that are unlike anything I’ve ever read in the crime-thriller genre.
Yet it’s hardboiled as well and violent at times as are all of the entries in the Factory Series.
I would advise anyone interested in reading this series to start with the first entry and read each novel in the sequence in which they were published.
My work tells me that our history is over, we are all over. I know that in my work I am supposed to represent a future, but I find that impossible when I look back at the past.
(pages 11 – 12)
And how will we describe our own loss and pain to others, once we have passed to join a dead father by a dead fire in the darkness of a country that has gone?
(page 12)
But the homeless, made invisible in their misery by the frozen night, were folk that in my work I knew much too well; the ruins of their youth framed their shrieks. They screamed and robbed each other for any money or drug that would release them from their rags and bed of cement, sang, droned and wandered through these lost parts of the city for as long as hell lasted for them… (pages 25 – 26)
What maddened me sometimes with my work at A14 was that I could not get any justice for these people until they were dead …Yet no murder is worse to find than a body dead of cold against a door.
(page 26)
”I tell you I’m standing in for [Inspector Kedward]”, he said neutrally. “Nobody said you was coming, otherwise doubtless he’d have waited here to see you.”
“Nobody said I was coming”, I said, “because I didn’t say so myself, I like it better that way. I find detective work depends on being sudden at times and that’s me, do you see? Sudden.”
(page 35)
”None of us are ever all right”, I said. “We’re all just waiting for the death express.”
(page 98)
There are times when I feel alone in the face of our society, its hatred and madness, its despair and violence.
To go on drawing my pay, to go on living in Acacia Circus, to go on acting on my own, just to go on at all, I have to be very careful. I feel the edge of the precipice with every step I take and have to be most particular how I tread; the path isn’t solid, and under it is the mist and that vile slide towards a bottomless death.
I am a minor figure for whom no god waits. The state that pays me laughs at me; my own people at work find me absurd.
I dream across the altar of my past, have many enemies.
(page 134)
Death is its own best friend, and our dreams know it.
(page 141)
November 12, 2012
"Life is made of slowly composed horrors."
The third entry in The Factory Series is Derek Raymond trying his hand at something slightly different and if not failing, then not quite matching his previous success. This one reads like a Hercules Poirot mystery but with the little Belgian grown weary of modern decay, beaten down by a lifetime of loss, pain and horror and developing a hardboiled attitude towards life.
The unnamed Sergeant is sent to investigate The Case of The Missing Mardy in a small English village, where everyone has something to hide and the majority of citizens are considered unworthy by our protagonist.
As always with Raymond the prose is poetic and bleak and the plot is interrupted by philosophical rants about the state of Thatcher's Britain but the building blocks that made the two previous novels so powerful are missing in small ways. The main source of frustration is how our hero seems to have dramatically changed his personality, his anger has become a lot more verbal and not in a good way. His dialogue (and those of other characters) was often painful to read and quite silly. This is not a matter of local slang, more speaking for the sake of the word count issues.
Still his piercing observations are turned on the death of the working classes, of small town life, of solidarity with your fellow man and naturally the broken nature of the police force. Britain is painted as morally bankrupt, the police force corrupt, concerned about their own image but with no interest in the public good, the media looking to vilify in order to shift units.
I'm left with an overall feeling of disappointment after this one and as such I don't have a huge amount to say. It's a fine piece of genre work that might have worked better without having read the two previous entries in the series but coming at it as I have I can't help but compare to those that came before and it pales in comparison. It helps to know that I Was Dora Suarez is next and it is regarded as his bleakest novel and his masterpiece.
The third entry in The Factory Series is Derek Raymond trying his hand at something slightly different and if not failing, then not quite matching his previous success. This one reads like a Hercules Poirot mystery but with the little Belgian grown weary of modern decay, beaten down by a lifetime of loss, pain and horror and developing a hardboiled attitude towards life.
The unnamed Sergeant is sent to investigate The Case of The Missing Mardy in a small English village, where everyone has something to hide and the majority of citizens are considered unworthy by our protagonist.
As always with Raymond the prose is poetic and bleak and the plot is interrupted by philosophical rants about the state of Thatcher's Britain but the building blocks that made the two previous novels so powerful are missing in small ways. The main source of frustration is how our hero seems to have dramatically changed his personality, his anger has become a lot more verbal and not in a good way. His dialogue (and those of other characters) was often painful to read and quite silly. This is not a matter of local slang, more speaking for the sake of the word count issues.
Still his piercing observations are turned on the death of the working classes, of small town life, of solidarity with your fellow man and naturally the broken nature of the police force. Britain is painted as morally bankrupt, the police force corrupt, concerned about their own image but with no interest in the public good, the media looking to vilify in order to shift units.
I'm left with an overall feeling of disappointment after this one and as such I don't have a huge amount to say. It's a fine piece of genre work that might have worked better without having read the two previous entries in the series but coming at it as I have I can't help but compare to those that came before and it pales in comparison. It helps to know that I Was Dora Suarez is next and it is regarded as his bleakest novel and his masterpiece.
May 22, 2018
word to the wise: never, EVER start your day by reading the end of one of Derek Raymond's Factory novels. After finishing this book I just wanted to cry.
http://www.crimesegments.com/2018/05/...
http://www.crimesegments.com/2018/05/...
March 30, 2016
This is the third book in Derek Raymond's Factory series.
The Factory novels, nominal police procedurals are narrated by an unnamed protagonist, a sergeant at London's Metropolitan Police Department of Unexplained Deaths, also known as A14. A14 handles the lowlife murders, and which are in stark contrast to the headline-grabbing homicides handled by the prestigious Serious Crimes Division, better known as Scotland Yard.
In How the Dead Live the unnamed Sergeant is sent out of London to investigate a missing person case in a small English village called Thornhill. The complicity and sleaze that is rife in the village is presumably meant to mirror that of broader British society. This was written in the mid-1980s and I wonder what Raymond would have made of our own era.
As with the previous two books, the prose is bleak and our uncompromising hero is like a blow torch, incinerating virtually everything that gets in his way. Unlike the previous books, he is discernibly angrier here, and his dialogue frequently seems to be that of a somewhat camp playground bully. I preferred him in the first book, when he went about his business in a quieter and more understated manner. Still, there is some predictable pleasure in him taking down a selection of corrupt fat cats in addition to some of his own colleagues.
This is the weakest of the three Factory novels that I have read so far. That said, I know that number four, I Was Dora Suarez (1990), is very highly regarded, and, for all its flaws, this is still compelling and I raced through it, and enjoyed the whole thing.
3/5
The five books in Derek Raymond's Factory series are...
1. He Died With His Eyes Open (1984)
2. The Devil's Home on Leave (1985)
3. How the Dead Live (1986)
4. I Was Dora Suarez (1990)
5. Dead Man Upright (1993)
Click here to read my review of "He Died With His Eyes Open" (Factory 1) (1976)
Click here to read my review of "The Devil's Home on Leave" (Factory 2) (1985)
Click here to read my review of "How the Dead Live" (Factory 3) (1986)
Click here to read my review of "I Was Dora Suarez" (Factory 4) (1990)
Click here to read my review of "Dead Man Upright" (Factory 5) (1990)
Click here to read a discussion thread about Derek Raymond
The Factory novels, nominal police procedurals are narrated by an unnamed protagonist, a sergeant at London's Metropolitan Police Department of Unexplained Deaths, also known as A14. A14 handles the lowlife murders, and which are in stark contrast to the headline-grabbing homicides handled by the prestigious Serious Crimes Division, better known as Scotland Yard.
In How the Dead Live the unnamed Sergeant is sent out of London to investigate a missing person case in a small English village called Thornhill. The complicity and sleaze that is rife in the village is presumably meant to mirror that of broader British society. This was written in the mid-1980s and I wonder what Raymond would have made of our own era.
As with the previous two books, the prose is bleak and our uncompromising hero is like a blow torch, incinerating virtually everything that gets in his way. Unlike the previous books, he is discernibly angrier here, and his dialogue frequently seems to be that of a somewhat camp playground bully. I preferred him in the first book, when he went about his business in a quieter and more understated manner. Still, there is some predictable pleasure in him taking down a selection of corrupt fat cats in addition to some of his own colleagues.
This is the weakest of the three Factory novels that I have read so far. That said, I know that number four, I Was Dora Suarez (1990), is very highly regarded, and, for all its flaws, this is still compelling and I raced through it, and enjoyed the whole thing.
3/5
The five books in Derek Raymond's Factory series are...
1. He Died With His Eyes Open (1984)
2. The Devil's Home on Leave (1985)
3. How the Dead Live (1986)
4. I Was Dora Suarez (1990)
5. Dead Man Upright (1993)
Click here to read my review of "He Died With His Eyes Open" (Factory 1) (1976)
Click here to read my review of "The Devil's Home on Leave" (Factory 2) (1985)
Click here to read my review of "How the Dead Live" (Factory 3) (1986)
Click here to read my review of "I Was Dora Suarez" (Factory 4) (1990)
Click here to read my review of "Dead Man Upright" (Factory 5) (1990)
Click here to read a discussion thread about Derek Raymond
Read
June 4, 2013The third case for the nameless* detective sergeant from the Unexplained Deaths division of the Factory, and for me the strongest yet. He's out of London this time, in a ghastly little anytown, but his methods remain the same: prowl around being an obnoxious prick in the hope that this will rattle loose the truth. But not an indiscriminate prick - the sergeant will happily deck a colleague, but he'll always do what he can for those he perceives as victims, even when by the letter of the law they're the criminals. His philosophical side seems to get more of a look-in here than in the first two books, and at times there are whole pages of inner monologue which read as though the Rimbaud of 'Season in Hell' had suddenly got compassionate. Is it plausible? I don't know, just as I suspect the shady argot may not be accurate for 1986. But it's definitely true. "All I want is for our democracy to be rid of violent bores", he says, but by heavens there are plenty. This is a state of the nation novel which rings at least as true now as when it was written - an elegy for the finer notes in the British nature, pissed away because people with money saw ways to make more money by putting it all in hock.
I didn't care for Will Self's introduction. Even aside from the backhanded compliments, faint praise and general air of superiority (all things one expects from Self, but still rather inappropriate here), he confesses to not having read the book when he nabbed its title. Poor form.
*He's so routinely referred to as 'nameless' that it almost becomes a name in itself, like that sword in Viriconium.
I didn't care for Will Self's introduction. Even aside from the backhanded compliments, faint praise and general air of superiority (all things one expects from Self, but still rather inappropriate here), he confesses to not having read the book when he nabbed its title. Poor form.
*He's so routinely referred to as 'nameless' that it almost becomes a name in itself, like that sword in Viriconium.
May 21, 2017
A Thornhill, un paesino a poche leghe da Londra, convivono - in un'alone di mistero - il dolore, la disperazione, l'amore, la solitudine, l'illusione, la speranza.
Qui una donna scompare, ma nessuno sembra preoccuparsi. Alcuni insistenti pettegolezzi, però, raggiungono i responsabili della Sezione A14 Delitti Irrisolti, la Factory, e il nostro sergente senza nome parte. Questo caso fa per lui.
In un ambiente decadente la corruzione di alcuni cammina a braccetto con la disperazione di altri.
Lui, il sergente senza nome, si presenta come al solito irriverente, duro, provocatorio, ma di fronte al dolore, alla dignità e alla venerazione assoluta di un uomo, china la testa in segno di grande rispetto e apre il cuore alla pietà, lasciando da parte giustizia e logica, creando - tra riflessioni, analisi e ricordi - attimi di pura poesia che, unendosi alla descrizione attenta e impietosa del male di vivere e del dolore delle vittime, arricchisce di una nota di dolcezza questo noir, scuotendo sensi e sentimenti.
Questo libro è di una sorprendente umanità che stringe il cuore e fa venire i brividi.
"Sembra banale, il dialogo del lutto, ma non lo è. Come quello della scienza, il potere dell'immaginazione è enorme, e grazie alle macchine del cuore e del cervello creiamo quella vita oltre la morte che siamo sicuri ci attenda."
📚 Biblioteca
Qui una donna scompare, ma nessuno sembra preoccuparsi. Alcuni insistenti pettegolezzi, però, raggiungono i responsabili della Sezione A14 Delitti Irrisolti, la Factory, e il nostro sergente senza nome parte. Questo caso fa per lui.
In un ambiente decadente la corruzione di alcuni cammina a braccetto con la disperazione di altri.
Lui, il sergente senza nome, si presenta come al solito irriverente, duro, provocatorio, ma di fronte al dolore, alla dignità e alla venerazione assoluta di un uomo, china la testa in segno di grande rispetto e apre il cuore alla pietà, lasciando da parte giustizia e logica, creando - tra riflessioni, analisi e ricordi - attimi di pura poesia che, unendosi alla descrizione attenta e impietosa del male di vivere e del dolore delle vittime, arricchisce di una nota di dolcezza questo noir, scuotendo sensi e sentimenti.
Questo libro è di una sorprendente umanità che stringe il cuore e fa venire i brividi.
"Sembra banale, il dialogo del lutto, ma non lo è. Come quello della scienza, il potere dell'immaginazione è enorme, e grazie alle macchine del cuore e del cervello creiamo quella vita oltre la morte che siamo sicuri ci attenda."
📚 Biblioteca
February 27, 2014
This is the disappointing third book (of 5) in Derek Raymond’s Factory Series. Dialogue which should be snappy veers into the sappy. And silly. Or paragraph after paragraph that no person would say. Ever. The author sneaks in an admission (p. 189): “It sounds banal, the dialogue of bereavement….” It sure does. The ending is ludicrous. This is more gothic than noir. If a book can jump the shark, this one does when the Nameless Detective Sergeant whips out his cock (his word choice) and pisses all over a bad guy’s Rolls-Royce (p. 200). I don’t know why I give it two stars—maybe nostalgia for the previous two books in the series and hopes for the two to come.
February 26, 2019
The third novel in David Raymond's Factory series, sees his nameless detective leave London for rural Wiltshire where he investigates the disappearance of a local doctors wife.
Like the other novels in this series, Raymond is not concerned with the mystery, or the police procedure. Instead he is obsessed with the skull beneath the skin, and the story is an interesting investigation into love, loss, and damnation, wrapped up in a plausable crime noir involving blackmail, extortion, and police corruption.
Like the other novels in this series, Raymond is not concerned with the mystery, or the police procedure. Instead he is obsessed with the skull beneath the skin, and the story is an interesting investigation into love, loss, and damnation, wrapped up in a plausable crime noir involving blackmail, extortion, and police corruption.
February 9, 2014
Between 3 and 4 stars. Terrific dialogue, memorable setting...weird set-up, macabre, which I'm fine with but a strong strain of sentimentality/romanticism marred it for me. Otherwise, quite good. Raymond's worth reading, this is just his second for me so far. His maverick investigator is a lot of fun to hang around, if unabashedly macho in a way detectives rarely are these days...they usually hold it in check and/or work a melancholic streak.
April 7, 2024
While this isn’t the best of Raymond’s Factory novels, it’s still so much weirder and more interesting than your average crime book.. The unnamed protagonist travels to a small town to solve a mystery and butts heads with local cops, weirdos, and lowlifes. The mystery (as it always is for me in mystery novels) is meh. What makes the book interesting are the cop’s dark philosophical musings and his insult-fests with the other characters. Sad and funny and worth your time.
Read
October 11, 2020Our unnamed detective investigates the disappearance of an old woman in a small town, discovers tragedy and corruption. It's a little one-note in its despairing noir nihilism (false nihilism really) but it is effective and well-written.
December 13, 2013
This third novel in the Factory Series has the unnamed sergeant from A14, the Department of Unexplained Deaths, leaving the grimy streets of London for the moral cesspool that is village England, 1986. After six months, a missing persons case sounds more and more like murder, hence the involvement of A14. Mrs. Mardry, the French wife of a fading aristocrat and a woman who once entertained the locals with singing concerts, has gone been missing. She had been ill, had taken to wearing a veil in public and her voice was reduced to a whisper. And then she was gone. And the police take no interest. And there is the question of a delivery of dry ice from the local undertaker during an electrical strike some weeks before. Shady real estate deals abound. The local gambling club is crooked.
Raymond’s books are classic noir, first person narratives that lead the reader into the darkness the hero knows surrounds most of human endeavor. Our hero, by they way, is an insufferable asshole when he deals with other people, but then the other people are fools, villains, and have the misfortune of getting in his way. Lament and fury inform his narrative in equal measure. “What angered me sometimes with my work for A14,” he says, “was that I could get no justice for these people until they were dead.”
What has happened in the village of Thornhill is macabre with baroque elements matched by Raymond’s narrative style. There is a crumbling manse straight from 18th century gothic fiction, complete with a horror in the basement. Men are cowardly, craven, and murderous. Women are avaricious crooks or whores. The philosophizing, from both the sergeant and the murder suspect, comes in batches as high flown as the obscenities the characters speak. Perhaps it’s a bit much when the sergeant quotes Edmund Spenser, but in this type of storytelling, too much strikes the proper tone.
Raymond’s books are classic noir, first person narratives that lead the reader into the darkness the hero knows surrounds most of human endeavor. Our hero, by they way, is an insufferable asshole when he deals with other people, but then the other people are fools, villains, and have the misfortune of getting in his way. Lament and fury inform his narrative in equal measure. “What angered me sometimes with my work for A14,” he says, “was that I could get no justice for these people until they were dead.”
What has happened in the village of Thornhill is macabre with baroque elements matched by Raymond’s narrative style. There is a crumbling manse straight from 18th century gothic fiction, complete with a horror in the basement. Men are cowardly, craven, and murderous. Women are avaricious crooks or whores. The philosophizing, from both the sergeant and the murder suspect, comes in batches as high flown as the obscenities the characters speak. Perhaps it’s a bit much when the sergeant quotes Edmund Spenser, but in this type of storytelling, too much strikes the proper tone.
May 27, 2011
I picked this up, read a few chapters, was completely hooked, and realized that I should read the first two in the series. I have now, and I am already sad that after this one, there is only one more left in the series.
It's weird that the intro is by Will Self, who also wrote a book called How the Dead Live.
A lot of people feel that Raymond has a tendency to slip into melodrama. I know what they mean, but don't actually mind it. Crime is melodrama.
Writing a few days later now. Just finished it. This time, narrator's slips into reminiscences, his hifalutions about emptiness of existence annoyed me. But the overall set up of the book was so powerful that, for the second time now a novel by Derek Raymond inflected my dreams. (Perhaps, it helped that in the book the narrator and the main murder suspect frequently tell us their dreams). Below is the record of my dream, not a quote from the book.
I dreamed that i went to sleep on a sofa at a friends' house and awoke 30 or 40 years later. My host aged not at all, lost his paunch, in fact looked like someone else entirely. His child, who was the first to greet me upon my waking, could not tell me what year it was. With difficulty I located a news site on a computer. Apparently, "news" is something that only very few old-fashioned people care about in the future.
In my dream, my host married a woman I love. Presumably, it was her child that greeted me. Unfortunately, the offspring's gender was not sufficiently clear for me to understand that this was my new bride.
Meanwhile, the mother was nowhere present in the dream. You know how dreams are: a series of substitutions.
This dream also had an unusual pet: something between a dog and a baby seal (a water rat?).
It's weird that the intro is by Will Self, who also wrote a book called How the Dead Live.
A lot of people feel that Raymond has a tendency to slip into melodrama. I know what they mean, but don't actually mind it. Crime is melodrama.
Writing a few days later now. Just finished it. This time, narrator's slips into reminiscences, his hifalutions about emptiness of existence annoyed me. But the overall set up of the book was so powerful that, for the second time now a novel by Derek Raymond inflected my dreams. (Perhaps, it helped that in the book the narrator and the main murder suspect frequently tell us their dreams). Below is the record of my dream, not a quote from the book.
I dreamed that i went to sleep on a sofa at a friends' house and awoke 30 or 40 years later. My host aged not at all, lost his paunch, in fact looked like someone else entirely. His child, who was the first to greet me upon my waking, could not tell me what year it was. With difficulty I located a news site on a computer. Apparently, "news" is something that only very few old-fashioned people care about in the future.
In my dream, my host married a woman I love. Presumably, it was her child that greeted me. Unfortunately, the offspring's gender was not sufficiently clear for me to understand that this was my new bride.
Meanwhile, the mother was nowhere present in the dream. You know how dreams are: a series of substitutions.
This dream also had an unusual pet: something between a dog and a baby seal (a water rat?).
July 6, 2012
Read it again two years later, and liked it better.
He describes the neighborhoods west of London. "Blocks of semi-abandoned streets made dead ends of effort where people who had tried o start something — anything — had been crushed by the dull, triumphant logic of the state."
"The wife's a poor little woman — dead red hair, no bust, the kind of woman no one ever wants to sin with and who dreams of murder."
At the gambling club: "She took two new packs from under the table and slit the seals with a thumbnail like a kitchen knife that had done murder."
Lots of stuff like this. Give this an extra half star
I like to just putter around the library, grabbing things that look like they might be interesting.
Which is how I stumbled on Derek Raymond.
His unnamed detective has to go to the English countryside to unravel the disappearance of a woman. His superiors — some of them, anyway — aren't all that anxious for this thing to get unraveled.
Crooked cops, an undertaker with a sinister criminal empire, and massive doses of existentialist tough guy talk make "How the Dead Live" stand out.
I could do without quite as much philosophical musing, which puts the brakes on the story. But it's a minot complaint, and I am looking forward to reading the rest of the late Mr. Raymond's back catalog.
He describes the neighborhoods west of London. "Blocks of semi-abandoned streets made dead ends of effort where people who had tried o start something — anything — had been crushed by the dull, triumphant logic of the state."
"The wife's a poor little woman — dead red hair, no bust, the kind of woman no one ever wants to sin with and who dreams of murder."
At the gambling club: "She took two new packs from under the table and slit the seals with a thumbnail like a kitchen knife that had done murder."
Lots of stuff like this. Give this an extra half star
I like to just putter around the library, grabbing things that look like they might be interesting.
Which is how I stumbled on Derek Raymond.
His unnamed detective has to go to the English countryside to unravel the disappearance of a woman. His superiors — some of them, anyway — aren't all that anxious for this thing to get unraveled.
Crooked cops, an undertaker with a sinister criminal empire, and massive doses of existentialist tough guy talk make "How the Dead Live" stand out.
I could do without quite as much philosophical musing, which puts the brakes on the story. But it's a minot complaint, and I am looking forward to reading the rest of the late Mr. Raymond's back catalog.
July 6, 2015
How the Dead Live (Factory 3) Having read I Was Dora Suarez, I wanted to read a bit more featuring the unnamed detective. This had the same gritty, gory fabric of that book with a different story over the top.Interesting to read a modern novel with no mobile phones and when the word computer is used you can almost taste the newness of it. A good look at life in England circa 1986.The detective is once again nameless but more of his past is revealed and a deep dark story it is. In fact at times his own past and the current story kinda merge in terms of flow, though not in detail. It is like reading one book with another running underneath.
Fascinating.I've read other reviews of this series (there are 5) which describe his writing and variable. Given that he was creating a new genre I think I can understand that. I also think his writing was lead by the detective whose life was indeed variable.These were real books, not Kindle books. I bought them from The Book Depository for mere pennies with free delivery. The thing was though, the books looked and felt new but smelled like they had been kept in a cupboard in a village hall since 1986.
Fascinating.I've read other reviews of this series (there are 5) which describe his writing and variable. Given that he was creating a new genre I think I can understand that. I also think his writing was lead by the detective whose life was indeed variable.These were real books, not Kindle books. I bought them from The Book Depository for mere pennies with free delivery. The thing was though, the books looked and felt new but smelled like they had been kept in a cupboard in a village hall since 1986.
December 14, 2016
«È solo se hai visto qualcuno morire che sai che cosa vuol dire sentirsi responsabili»
Torna il sergente senza nome della Sezione Delitti Irrisolti, questa volta deve occuparsi della sparizione di una donna, Marianne Mardy, una donna francese molto in vista ed ammirata, residente con il marito nella cittadina di Thornhill.
Rispetto ai due romanzi precedenti, questa terza avventura della serie della Factory mi è piaciuta un po’ meno. I personaggi tratteggiati da Raymond sono sempre molto realistici, però la spregiudicatezza del sergente questa volta mi è sembrata forzata e prende troppo il sopravvento rispetto a tutto il resto.
Resta comunque uno dei miei scrittori noir preferiti.
Torna il sergente senza nome della Sezione Delitti Irrisolti, questa volta deve occuparsi della sparizione di una donna, Marianne Mardy, una donna francese molto in vista ed ammirata, residente con il marito nella cittadina di Thornhill.
Rispetto ai due romanzi precedenti, questa terza avventura della serie della Factory mi è piaciuta un po’ meno. I personaggi tratteggiati da Raymond sono sempre molto realistici, però la spregiudicatezza del sergente questa volta mi è sembrata forzata e prende troppo il sopravvento rispetto a tutto il resto.
Resta comunque uno dei miei scrittori noir preferiti.
July 24, 2009
Derek Raymond is a very strange noir 'London' writer. The four stars is for the dialogue which is great. The plotting is ok, it's like any other workable who done it or what's going to happen in the next page. The one thing I am not crazy about is the ending of the book. It gets kind of sad and gooey in the end. In many ways, he is the most Raymond Chandler writer of all Chandler writers. He has the sentiment and the sense of justice down pat like Chandler - and his writing is very rich and textured like.
August 17, 2017
freddo, triste e pesante come un inverno in un isolato paese dove vivono solo giovani spiantati e anziani reduci di guerra che aspettano la fine tra un bicchiere e l'altro: e qui abbiamo esattamente questo, con in più case in sfacelo, locali di infima categoria e degrado umano e sociale. non credo di spolierare troppo dicendo che chi cerca qui un lieto fine ha sbagliato libro e, soprattutto, ha sbagliato autore.
December 11, 2010
wonderfully imaginative and disturbing
January 14, 2013
Another beautifully written Factory novel. Dark, but well worth it.
February 23, 2020
another one I read in French a long time ago and intend to read in English.
Cet écrivain est connu en France sous son vrai nom de Robin Cook (à ne pas confondre avec l'auteur de thrillers médicaux)
Cet écrivain est connu en France sous son vrai nom de Robin Cook (à ne pas confondre avec l'auteur de thrillers médicaux)
June 6, 2018
A classic noirish whodunit, with a very bleak outlook on the England of the mid-1980's.
October 27, 2024
wonderful prose. 3+
January 8, 2026
I'd actually give it an extra 1/2 star. Much better than I was anticipating.
May 20, 2015
«Quello che si fa da giovani,» mi stava dicendo prendendomi per il gomito, «non si disfa da vecchi, come mi dicevano i miei nonni.»
Raymond Derek è davvero un grande scrittore, Come vivono i morti un altro splendido romanzo noir della serie Factory e il sergente senza nome uno dei più bei personaggi del genere hard boiled.
Un romanzo amaro e meraviglioso, che eccede, con le sue dolenti pagine sul tema della vecchiaia e della morte.
A Thornhill, poco fuori Londra, c’è una grande villa in decadenza. Un tempo le sue stanze risuonavano di un canto melodioso, ma ora non si ode che silenzio. Gli interni sono bui e i muri scrostati, la pioggia goccia monotona dai soffitti. L’affascinante Madame Mardy, giunta anni prima dalla Francia a seguito del marito, con la sua voce delicata e i suoi modi garbati, è scomparsa.
A14, sezione Delitti Irrisolti, il sergente viene accolto da un clima di omertà e corruzione ma il suo scopo è dare pari dignità ai morti, specie se appartengono a una realtà dimenticata, se sono ai margini , se nessuno vuole ricordarli e tanto meno piangerli.
Il suo concetto di conoscenza si riassume in due parole: angoscia e disperazione, perché di ciò è stata quasi sempre fatta la sua vita.
Questo è il grande tema che Raymond Derek traccia senza tentennamenti, senza compromessi , il grande rispetto per la dignità e la sofferenza umana . Un valore assoluto che non ammette privilegi e differenze ma solo rispetto, a qualunque livello.
Ho letto e recensito E morì ad occhi aperti , Il mio nome era Dora Suarez, tutti capolavori del genere noir.
Non so che cosa pagherei per non vedere ciò che sta dietro quello che vedo, per non sentire ciò che sta dietro quello che sento, per non sapere ciò che sta dietro quello che so, e trovare solo corruzione. Tutta la nostra agonia è un modesto prodigio destinato a essere dimenticato, come quando si spengono le luci dopo lo spettacolo e fuori incomincia a nevicare. Ma nella mia parte come posso trovare le parole per ciò che sento, se il linguaggio, come la vita, è diventato irrecuperabile e arranca dietro le macerie della natura? Pochi hanno il tempo di invecchiare guardando in faccia bellezza e terrore, e io ho cercato di farlo troppo a lungo.
Il noir come metafisica, come approccio non religioso al concetto del male e dell'egoismo che pervade lo sviluppo della civiltà occidentale, facendo brandelli nel tempo di ogni valore di rispetto e eguaglianza
Quattro pareti possono diventare d’un tratto un cuore troppo pieno per il linguaggio, uno spazio di dolore al di là della descrizione, muto ma tangibile. Le ali invisibili ma spezzate dell’amore battono sui vetri dove le parole premono con maggiore urgenza, e l’ansia che hai dentro è legata a doppio filo con ciò che non immagini. Nelle case dove entro riesco a sentire la morte, anche se è un omicidio dimenticato: il corto pugnale, il bagliore rosso di uno sparo, la tensione incontrollabile di un attimo, la parola che non ci si può rimangiare e che fa crollare tutto.
Prosa fantastica , senza indecisioni, profonda ma , prima di lasciarvi un assaggio di scrittura, come al solito un brano musicale : In sottofondo avevano messo una canzone,Just like a butterfly does , che mi ricordava tempi migliori
Le indagini più massacranti le faccio sulla mia vita, che in realtà appar-tiene meno a me che ai miei pochi amici. La maggior parte dei quali, non tutti per fortuna, sono morti o invalidi: Jim Macintosh, morto; Ken Hales, idem; Foden, una pallottola nella colonna vertebrale, e Frank Ballard, para-lizzato a vita. Conosco i miei amici, sono come me; eravamo tutti intelligenti, sicuri delle nostre idee; sapevamo in che cosa credere e non avevamo mai paura. Ma adesso mi sento sull’orlo della solitudine, anche se prendo il posto dei miei morti e dei miei malati, credo. Ci sono momenti in cui mi sento solo di fronte all’odio e alla follia della nostra società, alla disperazione e alla violenza. Devo fare molta attenzione per continuare a ritirare il mio stipendio, ad abitare in Acacia Circus, a comportarmi a mo-do mio, anche solo per continuare a vivere. A ogni passo avverto il margi-ne del precipizio, e il cammino è pieno di insidie; sotto la nebbia si apre una morte senza fondo. Sono solo una comparsa per cui non veglia nessun dio. Lo Stato mi ripaga a suon di risate; i miei colleghi mi trovano assurdo. Sogno sull’altare del mio passato, circondato dai nemici.
Raymond Derek è davvero un grande scrittore, Come vivono i morti un altro splendido romanzo noir della serie Factory e il sergente senza nome uno dei più bei personaggi del genere hard boiled.
Un romanzo amaro e meraviglioso, che eccede, con le sue dolenti pagine sul tema della vecchiaia e della morte.
A Thornhill, poco fuori Londra, c’è una grande villa in decadenza. Un tempo le sue stanze risuonavano di un canto melodioso, ma ora non si ode che silenzio. Gli interni sono bui e i muri scrostati, la pioggia goccia monotona dai soffitti. L’affascinante Madame Mardy, giunta anni prima dalla Francia a seguito del marito, con la sua voce delicata e i suoi modi garbati, è scomparsa.
A14, sezione Delitti Irrisolti, il sergente viene accolto da un clima di omertà e corruzione ma il suo scopo è dare pari dignità ai morti, specie se appartengono a una realtà dimenticata, se sono ai margini , se nessuno vuole ricordarli e tanto meno piangerli.
Il suo concetto di conoscenza si riassume in due parole: angoscia e disperazione, perché di ciò è stata quasi sempre fatta la sua vita.
Questo è il grande tema che Raymond Derek traccia senza tentennamenti, senza compromessi , il grande rispetto per la dignità e la sofferenza umana . Un valore assoluto che non ammette privilegi e differenze ma solo rispetto, a qualunque livello.
Ho letto e recensito E morì ad occhi aperti , Il mio nome era Dora Suarez, tutti capolavori del genere noir.
Non so che cosa pagherei per non vedere ciò che sta dietro quello che vedo, per non sentire ciò che sta dietro quello che sento, per non sapere ciò che sta dietro quello che so, e trovare solo corruzione. Tutta la nostra agonia è un modesto prodigio destinato a essere dimenticato, come quando si spengono le luci dopo lo spettacolo e fuori incomincia a nevicare. Ma nella mia parte come posso trovare le parole per ciò che sento, se il linguaggio, come la vita, è diventato irrecuperabile e arranca dietro le macerie della natura? Pochi hanno il tempo di invecchiare guardando in faccia bellezza e terrore, e io ho cercato di farlo troppo a lungo.
Il noir come metafisica, come approccio non religioso al concetto del male e dell'egoismo che pervade lo sviluppo della civiltà occidentale, facendo brandelli nel tempo di ogni valore di rispetto e eguaglianza
Quattro pareti possono diventare d’un tratto un cuore troppo pieno per il linguaggio, uno spazio di dolore al di là della descrizione, muto ma tangibile. Le ali invisibili ma spezzate dell’amore battono sui vetri dove le parole premono con maggiore urgenza, e l’ansia che hai dentro è legata a doppio filo con ciò che non immagini. Nelle case dove entro riesco a sentire la morte, anche se è un omicidio dimenticato: il corto pugnale, il bagliore rosso di uno sparo, la tensione incontrollabile di un attimo, la parola che non ci si può rimangiare e che fa crollare tutto.
Prosa fantastica , senza indecisioni, profonda ma , prima di lasciarvi un assaggio di scrittura, come al solito un brano musicale : In sottofondo avevano messo una canzone,Just like a butterfly does , che mi ricordava tempi migliori
Le indagini più massacranti le faccio sulla mia vita, che in realtà appar-tiene meno a me che ai miei pochi amici. La maggior parte dei quali, non tutti per fortuna, sono morti o invalidi: Jim Macintosh, morto; Ken Hales, idem; Foden, una pallottola nella colonna vertebrale, e Frank Ballard, para-lizzato a vita. Conosco i miei amici, sono come me; eravamo tutti intelligenti, sicuri delle nostre idee; sapevamo in che cosa credere e non avevamo mai paura. Ma adesso mi sento sull’orlo della solitudine, anche se prendo il posto dei miei morti e dei miei malati, credo. Ci sono momenti in cui mi sento solo di fronte all’odio e alla follia della nostra società, alla disperazione e alla violenza. Devo fare molta attenzione per continuare a ritirare il mio stipendio, ad abitare in Acacia Circus, a comportarmi a mo-do mio, anche solo per continuare a vivere. A ogni passo avverto il margi-ne del precipizio, e il cammino è pieno di insidie; sotto la nebbia si apre una morte senza fondo. Sono solo una comparsa per cui non veglia nessun dio. Lo Stato mi ripaga a suon di risate; i miei colleghi mi trovano assurdo. Sogno sull’altare del mio passato, circondato dai nemici.
January 1, 2025
No one seems too interested in the assignment, or even knows for a fact that a crime has occurred, but someone who does care has just enough influence left with the Met that they have to at least send someone out to summarily investigate a potential murder in small-town Wiltshire. Naturally enough, they send a certain unnamed detective sergeant that readers of the Factory series are now quite familiar with. Out of his urban comfort zone, in an unfamiliar locale, and surrounded by a complacent constabulary who seem uninterested in crime, he digs into the case of a certain disgraced doctor and his vivacious younger wife that no one has seen for six months, and then starts wondering too why everyone in the village seems to be in the pocket of the local undertaker/property developer with his own ties to the doctor.
In many ways a departure from the Factory formula that Derek Raymond had established with the first two books in the series. The detective here is forced to leave his zone of comfort and, though he takes no real pleasure it seems in the decay and decline of London’s great urban artifice under Thatcher, he has a familiarity there and knows so intimately well the standard rogues gallery of suspects to more or less make solving crimes a matter of introspection. Here, he’s forced to do some legwork and the plot, as a consequence, appears to me more closely aligned to the genre. He gathers his clues, marshalls suspicions, sniffs leads, and cultivates his informants. The inhabitants as always are sketched out in broad caricatures. As ever, for Raymond, the dialogue is stilted and clunky. Slowly, the same preoccupations of the author emerge: the deterritorialization of the old social order and the emergence of avatars of Thatcherite sociopathic uninterest in others, and the way they seek accumulation at the cost of hollowing out any sense of remaining virtue. I had become worried that Raymond had lost his self-confidence in producing strange hermetic examples of almost anti-detective fiction. HTDL all seemed so disappointedly normal. So conventional. But I shouldn’t have worried. As the narrative rolls on, Raymond starts to draw on gothic conventions — hauntings, concealments, decay within the old shambolic estates, the symbolic orders caving away in the face of cold modernity’s progress. Not all that unexceptional in the detective genre to be sure — but atmospheric and flavourful in the best kind of way.
And then the volta. Just as the novel seems to be taking a turn to the supernatural there is a revelation towards the back end of the book that turns the novel from detective fiction to something far more metaphysical. It becomes a question of determining the difference between life and death and how inadequate humans can be at understanding the one and the other. Hard to say much more without giving away the punch of the ending, but it really worked for me to bring it into the cohesive conceptual sphere of the whole Factory series. Probably the most ‘thoughtful’ of the series so far, but also quite likely my least favourite too. I’m glad in the next novel, Raymond brings the old boy back to London for his final dash. I was Dora Suarez is often taken to be Raymond’s masterpiece and I look forward to seeing him work back on familiar terrain.
In many ways a departure from the Factory formula that Derek Raymond had established with the first two books in the series. The detective here is forced to leave his zone of comfort and, though he takes no real pleasure it seems in the decay and decline of London’s great urban artifice under Thatcher, he has a familiarity there and knows so intimately well the standard rogues gallery of suspects to more or less make solving crimes a matter of introspection. Here, he’s forced to do some legwork and the plot, as a consequence, appears to me more closely aligned to the genre. He gathers his clues, marshalls suspicions, sniffs leads, and cultivates his informants. The inhabitants as always are sketched out in broad caricatures. As ever, for Raymond, the dialogue is stilted and clunky. Slowly, the same preoccupations of the author emerge: the deterritorialization of the old social order and the emergence of avatars of Thatcherite sociopathic uninterest in others, and the way they seek accumulation at the cost of hollowing out any sense of remaining virtue. I had become worried that Raymond had lost his self-confidence in producing strange hermetic examples of almost anti-detective fiction. HTDL all seemed so disappointedly normal. So conventional. But I shouldn’t have worried. As the narrative rolls on, Raymond starts to draw on gothic conventions — hauntings, concealments, decay within the old shambolic estates, the symbolic orders caving away in the face of cold modernity’s progress. Not all that unexceptional in the detective genre to be sure — but atmospheric and flavourful in the best kind of way.
And then the volta. Just as the novel seems to be taking a turn to the supernatural there is a revelation towards the back end of the book that turns the novel from detective fiction to something far more metaphysical. It becomes a question of determining the difference between life and death and how inadequate humans can be at understanding the one and the other. Hard to say much more without giving away the punch of the ending, but it really worked for me to bring it into the cohesive conceptual sphere of the whole Factory series. Probably the most ‘thoughtful’ of the series so far, but also quite likely my least favourite too. I’m glad in the next novel, Raymond brings the old boy back to London for his final dash. I was Dora Suarez is often taken to be Raymond’s masterpiece and I look forward to seeing him work back on familiar terrain.
October 3, 2024
How the Dead Live is the third entry in the Factory novels. We return to our Unnamed Detective Sergeant, relocated by the Voice on special request to the sleepy town of Wiltshire outside London. Our detective sets out to locate the missing wife of a prominent local family, no one has seen her in six months and the local powers of the town are suspiciously disinterested in her disappearance. This book is different from the other entries, obviously it's because of the setting, Raymond feels free to twist away from the procedural structure that underpinned the first two entries to deliver a scathing rebuke to the decay of Thatcher era London.
This book more than any of the others is the most "Holmes" of the bunch; there's a significant amount of conjecture and detection that occurs before our detective deduces that a crime has taken place. Of course, it's much more hard-boiled and violent than Sherlock Holmes, in keeping with the tone and theme of the series. You can take the detective out of London, but he's bringing his methods (and what appears to be his downright fetish for career suicide) with him, and in fact, this book is best described as someone letting loose a tiger into a sleepy Victorian Hamlet.
The prose splits this book as equal parts crime novel and equal parts deep introspection and societal analysis. Rather than walking us step-by-step through the detective's thoughts on the case, Raymond instead focuses on stripping back the civilized veneer of the locals to reveal their hypocrisy and moral decay at work. The commentary alternates between musings on the detective's childhood in blitz-era London and observation of the societal breakdown so far removed from London. Some of this stuff is pure gold, the philosophy and the descriptions of the town stand out as particularly powerful. But when it comes to the dialogue, there are a number of conversations that were difficult to get through. This is different from the other books, the detective is different; he's always been angry, but the detective has allowed his work to consume him and rather than reserving his comments for the page he is vocally angry to anyone he perceives to stand between him and justice.
Different isn't always better. It might be weird to say this about books in the same series, but fans of the first two might not like this third one. Functionally, this book fits the formula, it's got all the same thoughts and themes and the brooding darkness that exemplify the series; but there are parts of this book that are bleeding bright red with undisguised cynicism and misplaced rage on the part of the detective. I can understand why some will read this book and say that it's missing a lot of the quiet nuance which makes the earlier books so powerful.
But I disagree, I'd say that this book kept to the theme of devolution of decay, and a big part of that necessarily involves changing the character of the detective in keeping with his collected experiences. For all the rough dialogue and brooding, this book carries its suspense throughout and manages to deliver a thrilling mystery by the end. Add that with segments of the best prose in the whole series, and you'll find a book that's more than worthy to read.
This book more than any of the others is the most "Holmes" of the bunch; there's a significant amount of conjecture and detection that occurs before our detective deduces that a crime has taken place. Of course, it's much more hard-boiled and violent than Sherlock Holmes, in keeping with the tone and theme of the series. You can take the detective out of London, but he's bringing his methods (and what appears to be his downright fetish for career suicide) with him, and in fact, this book is best described as someone letting loose a tiger into a sleepy Victorian Hamlet.
The prose splits this book as equal parts crime novel and equal parts deep introspection and societal analysis. Rather than walking us step-by-step through the detective's thoughts on the case, Raymond instead focuses on stripping back the civilized veneer of the locals to reveal their hypocrisy and moral decay at work. The commentary alternates between musings on the detective's childhood in blitz-era London and observation of the societal breakdown so far removed from London. Some of this stuff is pure gold, the philosophy and the descriptions of the town stand out as particularly powerful. But when it comes to the dialogue, there are a number of conversations that were difficult to get through. This is different from the other books, the detective is different; he's always been angry, but the detective has allowed his work to consume him and rather than reserving his comments for the page he is vocally angry to anyone he perceives to stand between him and justice.
Different isn't always better. It might be weird to say this about books in the same series, but fans of the first two might not like this third one. Functionally, this book fits the formula, it's got all the same thoughts and themes and the brooding darkness that exemplify the series; but there are parts of this book that are bleeding bright red with undisguised cynicism and misplaced rage on the part of the detective. I can understand why some will read this book and say that it's missing a lot of the quiet nuance which makes the earlier books so powerful.
But I disagree, I'd say that this book kept to the theme of devolution of decay, and a big part of that necessarily involves changing the character of the detective in keeping with his collected experiences. For all the rough dialogue and brooding, this book carries its suspense throughout and manages to deliver a thrilling mystery by the end. Add that with segments of the best prose in the whole series, and you'll find a book that's more than worthy to read.
February 25, 2015
Derek Raymond was a hard-boiled noir writer like no other. But that's odd praise for anyone who's read his work, because if there is a fault, or an error, or a naivety in his writing, it's that he wears his influences so blatantly on his sleeve. He quotes from poems and songs; his characters soliloquize about love and death as though they weren't petty criminals and policemen, but love torn protagonists out of a Shakespearean play. The thing about Raymond, is that his prose are a little comical, a little too on the nose, to really be "great." Whatever that means. But the thing is, and it's a perplexing feeling when reading his books, is that he is great. And he's not great in spite of the balder moments of his writing, but because of it. Something about it works. When the nameless detective soliloquizes about consciousness and morality in the face of a crumbling former empire, I find myself smiling. In the back and forth echo chamber of the dialogue, in the slang that was anachronistic even in Raymond's 80s, there is a music that is both cartoonish and hard-boiled.
I think if Will Self's introduction to How the Dead Live feels a little backhanded it's because, perhaps, he feels like I do when I read Raymond: A little embarrassed, and nauseous, and completely overjoyed. Self touches on Raymond's writing being that of the American noir tradition, in the mold of writers like Chandler and Hammett, only more so, and distinctly British. He talks about the wonderful ridiculousness, the "verbal sparring", of Raymond's dialogue. And he clues this American reader, who was all of 2 years old when How the Dead Live was first published (And thank you Melville House for republishing this series. You're doing god's work) that Raymond's Britain of the 1980s is actually made up of several very distinct eras all crammed together. And you get the sense that Self's making all these points through slightly gritted teeth, because, in a way, his introduction reads like a lists of faults. But put it all together and it works. And not only does it work, but it achieves what Raymond set out to write: A story that reaches into the depths of the meaning of darkness and love and monomaniacal righteousness (on the part of the nameless detective), and tells it darkly, colorfully, and with a sense of truth.
I think if Will Self's introduction to How the Dead Live feels a little backhanded it's because, perhaps, he feels like I do when I read Raymond: A little embarrassed, and nauseous, and completely overjoyed. Self touches on Raymond's writing being that of the American noir tradition, in the mold of writers like Chandler and Hammett, only more so, and distinctly British. He talks about the wonderful ridiculousness, the "verbal sparring", of Raymond's dialogue. And he clues this American reader, who was all of 2 years old when How the Dead Live was first published (And thank you Melville House for republishing this series. You're doing god's work) that Raymond's Britain of the 1980s is actually made up of several very distinct eras all crammed together. And you get the sense that Self's making all these points through slightly gritted teeth, because, in a way, his introduction reads like a lists of faults. But put it all together and it works. And not only does it work, but it achieves what Raymond set out to write: A story that reaches into the depths of the meaning of darkness and love and monomaniacal righteousness (on the part of the nameless detective), and tells it darkly, colorfully, and with a sense of truth.
June 21, 2020
Raymond goes for it and almost achieves his goal. Note the "almost" caveat. He attempts to bring his English noir to the level of Chandler, essentially beyond the simple thriller pleasures. His rule-breaking, authority-defying, vigilante-leaning copper is a prototypical anti-hero. He breaks character with poetic musings that are an abrupt departure from his trash-talking, quick-thinking detective work. It doesn't work. You are in the engrossed in a Hammett-style tale when incongruously you are caught in a short Proutian thought-scape.
Our hero and first-person narrator is a 40-something London cop sent to an English town to investigate a missing person's case. Foul play is suspected. He quickly makes enemies of the local police and citizens. His temper is quick and he can't order a cup of coffee or drink without starting an argument with the waitress or bartender. He is a real jerk. The only folks he gets on with is an elderly WWII patriot and a noble-hearted, romantic doctor. The doctor is one of the prime suspects and the husband of the missing woman.
The case unfolds quickly and we discover a strange motive to the mystery. The book for all its many flaws is easy to read and interesting. Over the top melodrama and a ridiculous crime is not unusual in the thriller category. The copper is intriguing, albeit objectionable and cartoonishly extreme.
I give Raymond lots of credit for his courage in pushing the boundaries and taking chances. He could have easily stayed true to the formula and cut the unusual flights of fancy of his narrator. The problem with taking extreme risks is somethings it ends up in a ridiculous mess. Although not a complete failure, I would say Raymond gamble fell far short of the mark.
Will Self offers a short introduction. It is impressive. He is a perfect choice to intro a book in which the author takes unnecessary and self-indulgent digressions. In a short, tight review, Self shows he is a master of the English language and brilliant.
Our hero and first-person narrator is a 40-something London cop sent to an English town to investigate a missing person's case. Foul play is suspected. He quickly makes enemies of the local police and citizens. His temper is quick and he can't order a cup of coffee or drink without starting an argument with the waitress or bartender. He is a real jerk. The only folks he gets on with is an elderly WWII patriot and a noble-hearted, romantic doctor. The doctor is one of the prime suspects and the husband of the missing woman.
The case unfolds quickly and we discover a strange motive to the mystery. The book for all its many flaws is easy to read and interesting. Over the top melodrama and a ridiculous crime is not unusual in the thriller category. The copper is intriguing, albeit objectionable and cartoonishly extreme.
I give Raymond lots of credit for his courage in pushing the boundaries and taking chances. He could have easily stayed true to the formula and cut the unusual flights of fancy of his narrator. The problem with taking extreme risks is somethings it ends up in a ridiculous mess. Although not a complete failure, I would say Raymond gamble fell far short of the mark.
Will Self offers a short introduction. It is impressive. He is a perfect choice to intro a book in which the author takes unnecessary and self-indulgent digressions. In a short, tight review, Self shows he is a master of the English language and brilliant.
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