3 ½ I guess.Hey, I reviewed this book almost two years ago and just noticed today the review is gone. Maybe I mistakenly deleted the book, could be.This novel tells a pretty good story, about the abduction of a young girl, possible related abductions of other girls, how the story is handled by a fairly corrupt police establishment, how it’s reported by a local newspaper, and … well, it’s a petty good “page-turner” … but I don’t know, I just feel not all that enthusiastic about recommending it or rating it highly. In fact I really don’t know what to say about what I liked in this book, other than the fact that I did read it over the course of about three days (during which I didn’t have a whole lot of reading time), and read no other books during that time, so it was a story that held my interest. Beyond that? I don’t know.My favorite American crime writer, George Pelecanos, actually praises this book (back cover). He is quoted as saying that the book “is raw and furiously alive, the literary equivalent of a hard right to the jaw. David Pearce has delivered the finest crime fiction debut of the year.” Well, but I still think Pelecanos writes better novels than this one.The book is raw, both language and sex are raw, and the violence is raw. That doesn’t disturb me in the least. (Pelecanos’ novels are also raw, on at least the first two of those points.) But Pearce doesn’t give us the characters that we can root for in the way Pelecanos does.I do feel I can pinpoint some of the things I didn’t care for in the novel.1) Too many characters. This is a problem for me because of my memory, mostly. The characters that are mentioned frequently from the get-go I can handle. But there are many characters in this book that are mentioned very briefly the first time or two, then later in the book become more prominent/important. By that time their names were simply fog-shrouded signposts to me, and I didn’t search back to find out who they really were.2) The main character, the narrator (it’s first person all the way) was unbelievable to me. First, he’s not a tough guy, except that he is able to punch out or otherwise physically harm several women in the story. But put him up against another man, and he basically is a punching bag – doesn’t even put up a fight, gets the shit kicked out of him again and again. In fact he gets beaten worse than the previous time over and over, and eventually the sadism of his many beaters is so extreme that I simply couldn’t believe that within hours, he seems to be pretty much okay again, as if that beating was nothing but a bout with alcohol, and requires no more than getting though the morning after hangover.Second, he seems to cry a lot when he’s confronted with photos of victims, or personal sob-stories from victims. I have no problem with his tears, but this simply seems thrown in by the author to make him more … something, I don’t know. It doesn’t seem to fit with the way he acts otherwise, his anger, his rough language.Our sensitive narrator also uses the phrase “I’m sorry” at least a hundred times in the story (it seems). Any time he isn’t demanding something, or pleading with someone to give him information, or saying “fuck”, he’s saying “I’m sorry”.3) Like Pelecanos, Pearce throws in references to pop music throughout the story. But the mentions are just brief throwaways. The music means nothing to the characters, they aren’t playing it themselves because they like it – it’s just music they hear over the radio as they drive, or hear coming out of a club as they walk by or enter. It recalls the time, the era of the story – but nothing else.4) The dialogue is perhaps realistic? But also a bit leaden. Just one example.Paula Garland came back in and closed the red door. ‘Sorry about that.’‘No, it’s me that should be sorry, just phoning up …’‘Don’t be daft. Sit down will you.’‘Thanks,’ I said and sat down …She started to say, ‘About last night, I …’I put up my hands. ‘Forget it.’‘What’s happened to your hand?’ Paula Garland had her own hand to her mouth, staring at the graying lump of bandages on the end of my arm.‘Someone slammed my car door on it.’‘You’re joking?’‘No.’‘Who?’‘Two policemen.’‘You’re joking?’‘No.’‘Why?’I looked up and tried to smile. ‘I thought you might be able to tell me.’‘Me?’She had a piece of red cotton thread … blahBut I said, ‘The same two coppers warned me off after I was here on Sunday.’‘Sunday?’‘The first time I came here.’‘I never said anything to the police.’‘Who did you tell?’‘Just our Paul.’‘Who else?’‘No-one.’‘Please tell me?’Paul Garland was standing … blah‘Please, Mrs Garland …’‘Paula’, she whispered.I just wanted to stop … blahBut I said, ‘Paula please, I need to know.’… ‘After you went, I was upset and …’‘Please?’Oh well.Look, there are two more books in this series. It’s quite likely I will read the next one. But I’m just not bowled over by Mr. Pearce. Maybe you will be. If you like raw crime fiction give it a try.NB. By the way, as I understand, the reason for all the accolades was basically the backstory of the novels, that is, the utter corruption of the regional police and the horrendous violence they routinely perpetrated in order to cover up this corruption. So maybe you're not supposed to pay too much attention to the characterization?
If ever there was a book to really make you appreciate how versatile the word "fuck" can be, I think this might be it. I'm not sure if that's a compliment or not. You'd think it would be, from me, considering that it could be considered a 'get rich quick' scheme for someone to put a swear jar in my vicinity. But my goodness, there were a fucking lot of fucks being said in this book, and I think that, in combination with the slang, it tended to muddy the waters a bit and make it harder to follow conversations. It was a bit hard to follow in general, though, especially when there's apparently an unwritten rule where one never finishes a sentence or question, and one never gives a full answer when a grunt will do. Not that I'm complaining all that much about it. It's far more realistic this way than if everyone was super forthcoming and just spilled all of their secrets bond villain style. But what did not help at all was the fact that there were so many recycled names. Multiple Clares, one being a young girl who is the catalyst for the story when she goes missing, and the other one being a middle-aged Scottish woman. Multiple Pauls/Paulas, double Barrys and Johns, etc. Basically, what I'm getting at is that, between the reused character names, choppy dialog, the dialect, the slang, and the busy-bee "fuck", I was doing a lot of context guessing and a lot of hoping that things would make sense in the end. And now you're dying to know: DID things make sense in the end? Umm, kinda. The whodunnit's revealed and whatnot... but it was a bit messy and convoluted, and a little bit out of left field. Like life, I guess. And I'm not even sure if THAT is a complaint, because... well, the structure of the story, and the narrative, are just kind of neurotic and random and always a step behind and confused... so the resolution being that way, while a little frustrating for the reader, does fit. This story is broken into three parts. Parts one and two felt a lot like build up to me. There were a shitton of strings going in every direction, with our narrator, Eddie, following them rather blindly and not quite knowing what the fuck he's doing, but just feeling like there's something more and that things just aren't quite right, so he keeps digging until he's in over his head. (Well, to be fair, he was in over his head from the start.. but he just didn't know it yet.) Part three, though. Part three starts with a fucking wrench to the face and then graduates to sledgehammers and keeps hitting. Never having read David Peace before, I wasn't sure how much to trust the narrative style. I mean, it's first person, right? So one naturally assumes that the narrator is going to make it through to the end of the book? Except that a skilled writer who isn't afraid to fuck with the reader's head can get around that... and Peace is one of those, for sure. Eddie is the kind of character that I just wanted to slap, constantly. He is an inexperienced, weak, idealistic, selfish, dick. He wants to see his name in print, but won't stand up for himself or his story, and let's his senior staff walk all over him. Granted, he does whatever he wants anyway, but I just wanted him to grow a pair. But then the deeper he goes into his investigation, the more... unhinged he becomes. His sort of unraveling is fascinating, in a "Oh shit, where is this going??" kind of way. It was very deftly handled, and he's about as unreliable as they get. Even I didn't trust him... though I WANTED to trust that he was at least being honest with himself and trying to get to the truth, despite his being a totally unstable shitbag. The investigation into the missing girl goes fucking EVERYWHERE and ties into just about everything. There are, as I mentioned before, a TON of characters, many of them sharing names, and it is hard at times to keep them straight. So, as I said before, it's something of a mess, though it does all.. mostly, come together in the end. There are a few loose ends though - and these may be tied up throughout the rest of the series... or maybe not and they were just forgotten, or there was some oblique reference to them that I missed or something. I don't know where I'm going with this review. I can't say that this book was light reading in any sense (content or style), but once it started to pick up, it was hard to put back down, so overall, I enjoyed it quite a lot.
Do You like book Nineteen Seventy Four (2000)?
OK, sure here's December 1974, John Lennon just released his shittiest post-lost-weekend album, and David Peace has the gall to create a journalist-detective who's tougher than Jesus? Seriously, our narrator here -- a junior reporter who just lost his dad (zzzzzzzz) -- bumbles through this complex and dangerous murder investigation (dead raped girl with live swan's wings stitched to her back) while constantly drunk, hungover, popping pills, pulped, bloodied, tortured: a Caviezel-cavalcade of martyrdom. Yet his nether bone remains alive and fully functioning when the plot doesn't require it at all, except for that one miraculous and symbolic moment when he achieves non-consensual anal sex with one hand wrapped in a cast. Bigger than Jesus. I dug the convolution of the plot -- the gay blackmail, the creepy locals, even the nasty beatdowns and torture of our hero (possibly copycatted at Abu Ghraib? -- this novel's from 1999), but I couldn't parse any relevant political/ideological lessons from the whole nutzoid collusion-conspiracy scene. It's all sensationalism and nasty, a Daily Mail front-pager to ring in New Year 1975. Our hero is a hapless priapic drunkard with a couple brain triggers that keep his scented trail alive, at least while his secret tape recorder's on. But when he fires up the cognition, finally, the murder mystery gets resolved in a corpse-filled, coal chamber of stoopid, with me staring goggle-eyed at the implausible resolution, and several loose ends (plus the narrator) left hanging... so, one star docked for a terrible Ellroy-lite ending.
—Mark Desrosiers
There is no comfort at all to be had in this book. It's bleak to the point of despair, from the first page to the last, swallows you into itself whole, and tries to drown you in misery and corruption. Even the expected hero of the piece, journalist Eddie Dunford, is despicable and deserves at least some of what he ultimately endures as his exploitative investigation into a child serial killer spirals out of his control, and collides with a conspiracy of violent, powerful men. The pace is manic, the prose structure innovative and poetic, and the effect bewildering and sometimes close to hallucinogenic. Unrelenting, but memorable.
—Richard Wright
VERY GENERAL SPOILER ALERTI just saw the TV movie dramatisation of this, entitled “Red Riding 1974” and I wanted to make a couple of notes here for myself really, to try and figure out a) why I hated it and b) why everyone else loved it. This is a not unfamiliar feeling for me of course but usually it’ll be some major Hollywood blockbuster (Avatar!) or some chintzy adaptation of Charlotte Bronte that everyone is swooning about while I remain sneering haughtily at the array of lemmings before me. (It’s not a pleasant characteristic I know.) Red Riding, though, is just up my street – gritty crime story set in working-class England in the 1970s, what’s not to like? Well… once you peer through the grimy window and focus your eyes, you’re in any old plot-by-numbers thriller all the way back to Chandler and Hammett, the guys who invented the cliches. And by now I'm demanding that thriller/crime story writers should have a whole NEW set of cliches. but David peace hasn't discovered them yet. So In this story you get- the hero is a jack-the-lad who gets to shag the women- there is a person who is trying to spill the beans to the hero but who’s drugged/imprisoned in a mental instutution/both before she can- there is a femme fatale who looks innocent but it turns out she’s all mixed up with the bad guys – surprise!!- all the cops are corrupt- the hero takes many bad beatings but just like a toy in a budgerigar’s cage keeps woozily popping right back up, nothing can hospitalise this guy- the bad guys keep killing anyone who knows too much just before the hero gets to them- the bad guys don’t mind killing the peripheral people, but for some strange reason they balk at killing the hero – now why would that be? Because it would be inconvenient for the author? Could be!That’s on one level but there’s another thing which is much worse. A book/movie like this is the expression of a particular quasi-political argument which I don’t buy, which is our old friend the Conspiracy Theory. The whole plot can be summed up thus: they’re all in on it! This book is dressed up in the grungy clothing of verisimilitude – naturalistic setting and dialogue, expertly rendered period detail, references to real events – but it peddles a giant falsehood, which is in this case that top policemen would collude with a rich local businessman who happens to get off on slaughtering children (!); and the web of deceit involves local newspaper editors and various cop minions. I don’t buy the psychology of the rich worldly guy who likes killing children and I don’t buy the conspiracy – but many many people do, just as many people don’t think Arabs flew the planes on 9/11. How serious are we to take this? Well, when it’s Bond fighting Goldfinger we know it’s a funny fantasy. But when the author is using child murder and police corruption for his story we may feel a little disappointed to discover they’re just as much props to his noirish adolescent paranoia as the Batcave and green kryptonite were in the comics I used to collect.That said, the movie is beautifully shot and acted. All dressed up and nowhere to go.
—Paul Bryant
