I Was Dora Suarez

Just might leave certain readers scarred for life. Not for the weak of mind or belly. Derek Raymond was one of the best in the genre.

This is the fourth book of Derek Raymond's (deceased unfortunately) acclaimed (and rather scarce) Factory series. The narrator becomes increasingly obsessed with the horrific life of the victim whose death he is investigating. The perversity of the life and death of Dora Suarez will shock any reader, no matter how hard-boiled your tastes. But the perversion isn't gratuitous and the story not without redemption at some level. As the subtitle of the book says:"The tragedy with help is that it never arrives." So if your tastes runs to hard-boiled, and you want to stray pretty far off the beaten path and you are willing to make the effort to slog through English english,find this book and read it, you won't regret it and you won't forget it.

This book brings us to the same dark, gritty, ignoble London that we know from movies like "Naked'. A bag lady, Dora Suarez, is brutally and shockingly murdered, and seedy, down-at heel cop Frank is the only person who thinks it matters. Plodding the dismal streets and speaking to people who do not care, he researches her life and death, becoming, because there is no-one else, the only person who ever cared for her. A compassionate book, a shocking book, an unjustly neglected book and one that will delight followers of detective and police fiction. One of the most twisted and evil villians in all literature.

In an age where post-modernism is, pathetically, worn on endless worthy, fashionably distressed sleeves, the contemporary novel would seem to have lost its capacity to shock. However, this novel might serve as a possible anodyne to such complacent musings. Inexorably disgusting, depressing and nihilistic...and yet... utterly compulsive...