I Was Dora Suarez: Factory 4

(, Main)

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Description

An ax-wielding psychopath carves young Dora Suarez into pieces and smashes the head of Suarez's friend, an elderly woman. On the same night, in the West End, a firearm blows the top off the head of Felix Roatta, part-owner of the seedy Parallel Club.



The unnamed narrator, a sergeant in the Metropolitan Police's Unexplained Deaths division, develops a fixation on the young woman whose murder he investigates. And he discovers that Suarez's death is even more bizarre than suspected: the murderer ate bits of flesh from Suarez's corpse and ejaculated against her thigh.



Autopsy results compound the puzzle: Suarez was dying of AIDS, but the pathologist can't tell how the virus was introduced. Then a photo, supplied by a former Parallel hostess, links Suarez to Roatta, and inquiries at the club reveal how vile and inhuman exploitation can become.



I Was Dora Suarez is the fourth book in the Factory series.

Reviews

A sulphurous mixture of ferocious violence and high-flown philosophy. * Prospect *
A mixture of thin-lipped Chandleresque backchat and of idioms more icily subversive. * Observer *
Deadbeat, downbeat but thoroughly believable, and evoked with the scary precision of a scalpel slicing through flesh... extreme, but like nothing else you'll ever read -- Richard Rayner * Los Angeles Times *
I cannot think of another writer so obsessed with the skull beneath the skin. * The Times *
Raymond writes with a stomach-churning exactness about murder, madness and mutilation. * The Times *
If you think of the act of writing as a game of chicken between the author and his talent, then Derek Raymond is one author who achieves his ecstasy by sailing off cliffs. Everything about I Was Dora Suarez shrieks of the joy and pain of going too far. * New York Times *

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.