Thursday 14 August 2008

Crime Scene Yorkshire


Just a few weeks ago I read about David Peace on Adrian McKinty's blog. Peace, who grew up in Yorkshire in the seventies, has written four books based around the time of the Yorkshire Ripper murders. McKinty's report on the Red Riding Hood Quartet was glowing to say the least. Example:

[1974] is fast, furious, exciting, tense, sexy, all that good stuff, but what sucked me in was the prose. Peace has an extraordinary command of the language. He’s clearly read everything, digested it, mulled it over. New authors can take three or four books to find their voice. Peace’s is there from page 1, line 1. And what a voice. Searing, visionary, funny, dry. English writers, especially crime writers further down the M1 don’t tend to be this earthy, this rough, this visceral.

Sounds good, right?

Well, thanks to the good folks at Serpent's Tail, the entire quartet thumped my doormat yesterday. Hopefully I'll be dipping my toe in soon to find out if this Peace chap is my cup of Tetley.

3 comments:

colman said...

I've only read 74 so far, and that was pretty good.....I need to catch up also.
I'm might skip ahead to his DAMNED UTD book about Leeds and Clough in the 70's - not exactly a marriage made in heaven!

adrian mckinty said...

They're all good and dont need to be read sequentially.

Peace has cojones. The brutal opening sentence of Ellroy's The Cold Six Thousand is matched for me by Peace's chapter title and opening in 1980.

still have to read the clough one and the one about the miner's strike. are you listening serpents tail?

a...

Gerard Brennan said...

Colman - I know how fussy you are, so I'll be interested in finding out how much I like the Peace books.

Adrian - I'll maybe take a peek at that chapter title and opening before I crack open 1974.

gb