A few years ago one of my trusted go-to sources for book recommendations foisted upon me a pile of strange new titles to go forth and educate my arrogant, over-confident backside upon, and recognizing, in a rare moment of honest introspection and candid self-appraisal, that I could in fact stand to have my horizons broadened, my well deepened, and my metaphors multiplied, cracked the cover of an unassuming little tome titled I Was Dora Suarez by Derek Raymond.
It’s probably the single most unsettling reading experience of my adult life.
The hell kind of recommendation is that, you may well ask, and I answer, the most sincere. I really can’t/don’t recommend it to even most people, but for those who’re up to it, it’s a game changer. I think you can legitimately call this portion of my life Post-Raymond (real name Robin Cook, but there was some other guy publishing under that name), in that having read him, a good third of the books I might’ve enjoyed before are now rendered mute, pointless, redundant or even blatantly offensive in their handling of themes like killing, criminal psychology, honor-bound police or society’s dispossessed.
Turns out I’d read book four of what are collectively referred to as the Factory series, and while Suarez remains the most shocking, disturbing and commonly referenced, it shares qualities and themes with its predecessors so that reading them in succession is akin to digesting an entire symphony, (Suarez being the bombastic climax and culmination of everything that preceded).
The Factory books begin with He Died with His Eyes Open (continued with The Devil's Home on Leave, How the Dead Live and I Was Dora Suarez), and the nameless London detective taking his assignment to investigate a brutal if politically unimportant murder. He belongs to the Unexplained Deaths department where there is no hope for promotion, and where inconsequential slayings are sent to remain unsolved, or solved, forgotten regardless, whatever. The nameless detective is at least as obsessed with the why as the who and not satisfied with simply putting a recognizable face on slayer or slain, but filling in and fleshing out their lives and deaths and insisting (even if only to himself) that the basic and common contract has been transgressed again.
The depiction of the holy tri-un relationship of obsessive crime fiction, that between investigator/avenger, victim and killer has rarely been equaled, (perhaps James Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia gets there) and never been eclipsed on the page, so it’s little wonder that those who’ve read his work have been changed by it somehow.
Melville Books are reprinting Derek Raymond’s four Factory novels and leading up to the very first US release of the fifth and final title Dead Man Upright which was published in the UK just after Raymond’s death in 1993. Over at the Melville website, Paul Oliver is posting some great Derek Raymond content including audio of Raymond reading from Suarez and a two-way influence list where the sources and results of Raymond’s work are stacked side by side. See Raymond Chandler, Jim Thompson, David Goodis, James Crumley, Scott Phillips, Cathi Unsworth, David Peace, Allan Guthrie, Cara Black and James Ellroy leave a mark on the reintroduction of an underexposed talent to the popular consciousness.
Jedidiah Ayres writes fiction and keeps the blog Hardboiled Wonderland.
