Book description
When a middle-aged alcoholic is found brutally battered to death on a
roadside in West London, the case is assigned to a nameless detective
sergeant, a tough-talking cynic and fearless loner from the Department
of Unexplained Deaths at the Factory police station. Working from
cassette tapes left behind in the dead man?s property, our narrator must
piece together the history of his blighted existence and discover the
agents of its cruel end. What he doesn't expect is that digging for the
truth will demand plenty of lying, and that the most terrible of
villains will also prove to be the most attractive. In the first of six
police procedurals that comprise the Factory series, Derek Raymond spins
a riveting, and vividly human crime drama. Relentlessly pursuing justice
for the dispossessed, his detective narrator treads where few others
dare: in the darkest corners of London, a city of sin plagued by
unemployment, racism and vice, and peopled by a cast of low-lifes, all
utterly convincing and brought to life by Raymond?s pitch-perfect
dialogue. Derek Raymond was born Robin Cook in 1931. His novels
include A State of Denmark, The Crust on its Uppers, I Was Dora Suarez
and How the Dead Live, which was made into a film. The son of a textile
magnate, he dropped out of Eton aged sixteen and spent much of his early
career among criminals and was employed at various times as a
pornographer, organiser of illegal gambling, money launderer,
pig-slaughterer and minicab driver. He died in London in 1994.
