"Where I go, the ghosts go. I go where the evil is."The second instalment in Derek Raymond's seminal five part British Noir series, The Factory may not be as bleak as the first part, He Died With His Eyes Open but what it lacks in existential anguish it makes up for in grisly, disturbing and seedy depictions of England in 1984, a particularly gruesome crime and a fascinating yet insane villain.It's been a buzz term for a few years now thanks to David Cameron but if ever the words Broken Britain had any meaning it was meant for this dark period in the early days of Margaret Thatcher. The unnamed protagonist from the Unexplained Deaths department is once more hunting for a killer after boiled human remains are found in five shopping bags only this time he knows who the killer is and is forced to play a game of cat and mouse to get his man. Moving through the criminal classes seemingly without fear of reprisal he finds that the 'hit' goes further than he would ever have imagined.The way Raymond uses the crime novel to make political statements is a subtle achievement, at no point is there any grandstanding from any of the characters or even negative comments for that matter, he simply lays out the facts in such a way that you are left asking questions which the novel provides answers for, again within the body of the story.I have a real affection for the hero of these works, his dedication to the truth no matter what it costs him is a bit of a genre trope but the way he goes about it is not. We discover a bit more of his background in this entry, allowing us an insight in to why he works in the manner that he does with no regard for career progression. It also allows Raymond to blindside you with beautiful passages about heartbreak and loss just dropped in to a chapter about trapping a murderer. One time I was caught so off guard that tears were in my eyes before I even knew what was happening.He used a lot of his own experiences in creating the first book in the series but I am not sure how much of himself has gone in to the extra background found in this one. There's no mention of such loss in his life that would dictate that he was writing from experience which can only lead me to assume that for a man that writes the darkness in a man's soul so well has also created these beautiful, lighter moments.I cannot rate this one as high as the first instalment, primarily because the death and life of Charlie Staniland in He Died With His Eyes Open was an extremely powerful piece of writing that I enjoyed more than almost anything else I remember reading, but it is still a fantastic piece of noir writing that is well worth investing your time in.
THE DEVIL’S HOME ON LEAVE. (1984). Derek Raymond. ***.tRaymond, one of the early practitioners of British noir, has come through with another installment of his “Factory” novels. In his case, the Factory was the Poland Street Police Station, W1, in London. His protagonist was a Detective Sergeant (never given a name) who seems to be the only member of the Department of Unexplained Deaths, situated in Room 205 in the Factory. The Sergeant fights fiercly to keep this job because it allows him to work independently of the rest of Scotland Yard. Aside from being rigorously independent, he carries about in his head a wide knowledge of the criminal element in London and surroundings. The crimes he works on – as opposed to those investigated by the Serious Crimes Unit – usually involve murders of people whose demise wouldn’t make the front page of any newspaper. In this installment – the second in the series, the first being “He Died With His Eyes Open” – he starts out with the discovery of the body of an old woman by the side of the M1. When he gets to the body, he finds that she is still alive, but dies before help arrives. That’s the last we hear of this woman. Apparently this was an opener just to get our attention, not really part of the greater scheme of things – although it is suspected that she was collateral damage from some of the prinicipal thugs we meet later on. The central theme of this book is our Sergeant’s discovery of a dead body in an abandoned warehouse. What makes it significant is that the body has been hacked up into five groups, each group wrapped separately in a grocery store plastic bag. To top it off, the murdered man had been drained of blood, then boiled in water until his features turned to mush. The killers went to great lengths to prevent the corpse’s identification. We later learn the identity of the killers, but only after a lot of investigation by the Sergeant. There was a reason for this killing, obviously done by professionals, that our hero soon latches on to. The murdered man was a “grasser,” i.e., a snitch. This brings one of the negatives of this series to the fore: There is a lot of British underworld slang employed in these novels, with no glossary to help the reader out. In any event, if your educated guess gets you close to their meaning, that’s good enough. Raymond provides an eerie ride through underground London, and we get to meet a lot of its inhabitants. It’s a rough ride though.
Do You like book The Devil's Home On Leave (2007)?
Dove vado io, là vanno i fantasmi. Io vado là dove si trova il male.Mi piace il "sergente" della sezione Delitti Irrisolti della stazione di polizia di Chelsea: un idealista solitario e insofferente a qualsiasi gerarchia, duro ma ancora capace di rispettare una vita che lo ha trattato crudelmente. In un capannone abbandonato viene scoperto un cadavere fatto a pezzi, bollito e sistemato con cura in cinque sacchetti di plastica. La scena del delitto è perfettamente ordinata e pulita, e il corpo non è più in alcun modo identificabile: un lavoro da professionisti. Il sergente comincia a indagare, e ricostruisce una trama criminale che si allarga come una spirale su tutta la città, fino a toccare i servizi segreti e il governo. Ma qui finisce anche il libro, la storia si fa poco credibile, lontana dal personaggio e da chi, come me, non ama troppo gli intrighi fantapolitici ma la tensione, il dramma e le piccole vittorie degli eroi border-line che perseguono la giustizia più delle leggi e delle regole. E lo scrive anche : Ma lo spionaggio non ha nulla a che fare con la A14, noi ci occupiamo di morti oscure, di omicidi che non meriteranno mai i titoli di testa dei giornali.Il Sergente resta un gran personaggio; la morte di Dahlia, la figlia uccisa dalla pazzia nascosta della moglie ha mutilato la mappa delle sue emozioni.Più duramente ancora, ha abbattuto dentro quanto aveva edificato di sereno e socievole, lasciando solo strade maestre verso poche mete essenziali attraverso aspri e cupi territori, strade che spesso costeggiano il bordo di precipizi dai quali preferisce il più delle volte distogliere lo sguardo ma non sempre ci riesce.Ci sono momenti, non so se capita a tutti, in cui il futuro appare al di là delle proprie forze: un orrore insostenibile e nessuno da invocare in aiuto.Peccato che questo libro sia fondamentalmente illeggibile,e non resti che ascoltare Sail On (Through the Night) erroneamente attribuita nel libro a Simon & Garfunkel e leggersi , dello stesso autore , due grandi libri : Il mio nome era Dora Suarez e E morì a occhi aperti.
—Luca Lesi
The Devil's Home on Leave is book two in Derek Raymond's British Noir Factory series. My addiction to Raymond's writing grows stronger with every page. The unnamed detective who tells tells these stories lets the reader into his heart and life more in this book than the first one. We learn about his ex-wife, her illness, the tragic death of his child...It's the detective's compassion and resilience that makes him such an attractive character even in this dark and gritty world of Thatcher-era London he inhabits.Noir is less about the who-done-it aspect of the mystery and more about the why. It's also about the delivery, the way the detective sees and addresses the world. Favorite part of The Devil's Home on Leave? After a long two page flashback where the detective remembers his heroic veteran father and his slow death from cancer, the chapter ends with these knife-twisting words: "As for my mother, she'd been dead already very many years--of boredom, I think, really." Now that's noir for you.
—Tiffany Reisz
You know you're in for an unusual dark ride when the first victim in this UK crime novel is found boiled, severed into pieces and carefully sealed in five separate bags. Unorthodox methods, in the action as well as Raymond's narrative approach to the crime genre, are what make The Factory novels stand out so boldly. These are not cozy tea-time mysteries set in the countryside. Agatha Christie fans may want to look elsewhere, and if they decide to visit Raymond's UK, they may want to bring their own set of sheets.While not as eloquent and transcendent as the first, 'He Died With His Eyes Open', this nasty little thriller spreads the intrigue from the military all the up to the ministry of defense, while still keeping the action on the level with street thugs ('villains'), desperately wounded drunks and sharp-tongued psychopaths itching for the next kill.Raymond doesn't really care about a slow reveal here. He exposes the killer's identity right away. The point of the novel is not 'who' but 'why', and the novel scorches away as the anti-authoritative and 'cheeky' Unnamed Sergeant plays his hand with enemies on the force, as well as those on the streets. And he's met his match with a self-proclaimed killer, someone on the eye level with the Devil's own.'The Devil's Home on Leave' is more proof that the Unnamed Sergeant is a worthy sibling to Philip Marlowe - only unlike the LA detective he's deeply haunted, spiritually racked and oddly sympathetic to those swept under the rug; and lastly, he's working for the very same force that he despises - all under the gaze of Thatcher's London. This is crime fiction at its most bleak - and for #britnoir, worth its weight in gold.
—Graham P
