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Nineteen Seventy Seven
By David Peace
£8.99
pp341
Out now from Serpent's Tail
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Peace brings crime noir to the Yorkshire Ripper
investigation in his devastating follow-up to Nineteen
Seventy Four.
Through intimate documentary detail about the Ripper's
methods and victims, you get a real whiff of the
panic, suspicion and fear that swept West Yorkshire
and the north of England for over five years in
the late 70s and early 80s.
If you've read any James Ellroy or Elmore Leonard
then you'll have an idea of what to expect. Peace
uses the same raw methods as his American noir counterparts
to expose the sordid depth of institutions and the
intrinsic corruption that only comes to light in
a crisis.
The main characters are fictitious in name but ring
uncanny similarities amongst investigating officers
at the time. Detective Sergeant Bob Fraser is the
one-time protégé desperately holding
on to his revered reputation whilst conducting a
relationship with Janice Ryan, a prostitute in the
Chapeltown district of Leeds, where the Ripper was
known to have attacked. This may qualify as one
of the largest literary logs on own doorstep since
Raskolnikov decided to get handy with a hatchet.
What is most effective about Nineteen Seventy
Seven is its sense of era. The Queen's Silver
Jubilee celebrations provide the background, clashing
with the gruesome image of the Ripper's activities:
monarch-mania contrasts with the atmosphere of distrust,
fear and desperation.
If you like to scare the shite out of yourself by
reading the occasional horror title, take one step
further and read something that really will frighten
you. Nineteen Seventy Seven is the terrifying
tome if you want to feel nervous about opening doors
in the dark.
— Dan Crimes 18.09.00 |
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