He Died with His Eyes Open: Factory 1

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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.

Reviews

A crackerjack of a crime novel, unafraid to face the reality of mans and womans evil Evening Standard A mixture of thin-lipped Chandleresque backchat and of idioms more icily subversive Observer
A pioneer of British noir No one has come near to matching his style or overwhelming sense of sadness Raymond's world is uniformly sinister, his language strangely mannered. He does not strive for accuracy, but achieves an emotional truth all his own. -- Marcel Berlins * The Times *
Cook's prose can make amazing stylistic leaps without once losing its balance He anticipates James Ellroy and David Peace, among others, in this terrifying determination to disclose the skull beneath the skin a supreme example of how nasty Britain actually is. -- Time Out Witty * perceptive and well written Big Issue *

Author Bio

Derek Raymond was born Robin Cook in 1931. The son of a textile magnate, he dropped out of Eton aged sixteen and spent much of his early career among criminals. The Factory series followed his early novels, The Crust on Its Uppers and A State of Denmark. His literary memoir The Hidden Files was published in 1992. He died in London in 1994.