(Original Review, 1990-04-17)“He produced a big 9mm Quickhammer automatic with the tired ease of a conjurer showing off to a few girls and shlacked one into the chamber. He told Roatta: ‘Now I want you nice and still while all this is going on, Felix, because you’re going to make a terrible lot of m...
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 co...
My first novel by Derek Raymond (born Robin Cook in 1931, and who died in London in 1994). The son of a textile magnate, he dropped out of Eton aged sixteen and was employed at various times as a pornographer, organiser of illegal gambling, money launderer, pig-slaughterer and minicab driver. Much o...
A man of little consequence is found brutally murdered and the Detective Sergeant of the Department of Unexplained Deaths is given the case. It seems Staniland, the victim, was a writer, and has left a number of cassette tapes behind detailing the final weeks of his life, notably a woman he's obsess...
Great, gripping and poetic crime fiction. Totally addictive reading about a policeman in London investigating the death of a middle aged alcoholic, a talented man failed in life and love, and hooked up with wrong femme fatale. But is there ever a right one? For all its bleakness, violence and death,...
Extrem Noir literature... One of the darkest noir novels I’ve ever read and also one of the best. Derek Raymond is far beyond noir. There probably isn't even a word for his kind of darkness I think.I definitely see noir as existentialist literature and this is one of the its primary examples. Everyo...
“Every day you amass knowledge in a frantic race against death that death must win. You want to find out everything in the time you have; yet in the end you wonder why you bothered, it'll all be lost. I keep trying to explain this to anyone who will listen.”Robert Cook as Derek RaymondThis is the fi...
OMG. This book includes a "Department of Unexplained Deaths"! A whole DEPARTMENT of them! As an ex public servant, I am rushing to get a job application in immediately. I hope they put me in charge of the "Unexplained Deaths Creation" section...
This is a different kind of mystery novel. Instead of hiding the clues for as long as possible and distracting the reader from the obvious, Derek Raymond dives deep into the pool of victim characterisation. His nameless Factory detective gets lost in the cassette tapes the victim has recorded and fi...
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