Customer Reviews

He Died with His Eyes Open (Factory 1)

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If you enjoy the stylings of James Ellroy, Iain Banks, or even Raymond Chandler, anything by Derek Raymond is a sure bet. "He Died With His Eyes Open" is a stunning read. It follows the narrator, a nameless English detective, during his pursuit/descent while trying to find those guilty of a violent murder. Through writings and tape-recorded thoughts recovered from the victim, the detective becomes increasingly attached to the persona of the deceased. The prose is stark, elegant, incredibly philsophical, and yields a wealth of great quotes.

Another reviewer on Amazon.com mentioned that the methods of detection were not convincing, and the ending was "over-the-top".
Well...it's certainly not in the vein of an Agatha Christie mystery; It is a rare, brilliant look at the primal underpinnings of "civilized" society. It is classic noir, in the sense that it is a stylistic meditation on the nature of man/good vs. evil, as seen through the eyes of someone who makes a life out of being on the front lines of misery.

"He Died With His Eyes Open" compares more than favorably to Ellroy's "The Black Dahlia", with proper British style.

This is a series that lacks a lot of things. The main character lacks a name. He also lacks human emotion and emotional brakes. His life is a random series of inertia. He would rather do nothing, but once he starts, whatever he's doing develops a life of it's own until it comes to a conclusion (not always satisfactorily).

He works as a 'sergeant' in the "Factory" (Metropolitan Police) in the Department of Unexplained Deaths'. Unlike the SCD (Serious Crimes Division) the DUD (get it!) gets the murders of prostitutes, drug addicts and the other detritus of society. The crimes of course are serious but only to those they are perpetrated on.

Our Sergeant is called on to a murder scene of a man found in the bushes just off a main highway (the A2). The man has been beaten brutally (all of his major bones have been broken and then he was hit on the head with a hammer). He has no identification. But he is a nobody. The Sergeant has a nemesis/colleague in SCD who is trying to get him to move up. The Sergeant says, "I like my independence." But what he really likes is to be able to work by himself, drink when he wants and work a case the way he wants.

The Sergeant works his way through the underbelly of late 1950s London. The city is still showing it's ruff edges left over from the War and rationing has just ended. But there is still a large unemployed under- class that lives on the margin of society. This is the Sergeant's milieu and he doesn't want to leave it. It's as much a part of him as he is a part of it.

The story and the solution are no great shakes, but they aren't the reason to read the story. The descriptions of the other side of London at this time in history and the way people lived and spoke is the real reason to read the novel.

Zeb Kantrowitz

I can't believe I never knew about this writer until recently...having
accidentally discovered him on the Net.

The only warning here is: once you start reading, you can't stop.

Also, I gave his I WAS DORA SUAREZ five stars. The book is so strong
it just might make a few people vomit.

Would love to get The Hidden Files, only it seems tough to locate here in the
U.S.

Lastly, you might be bummed out to know Raymond died back in l994. At
least we have the books.
Powerful stuff indeed.

I've been working my way (out of order) through the Factory Series, and I don't think there's a more stunning or better written series of crime novels than these. This is the 1st in the series (and the 3rd that I read), and is grim stuff as our nameless detective listens to the cassette recordings left behind by a brutally murdered man, and grows to deeply respect and feel the anguish of this man's life, while at the same time hating those who had lived parasitically off this man. This is very grim stuff, in a way a meditation on dying and the hopelessness of life, but a must read for anyone who's a fan of hardboiled and noir literature.

Derek Raymond was the pen name for a brilliant author named Robert William Arthur Cook, who did not want to be confused with Robin Cook of COMA fame. Raymond, whose career was cut short by his death in 1994, is regarded as the father of English noir. A great deal of the reason for Raymond's being acknowledged as such is found in the five volumes of the Factory series, the first four volumes of which have been newly printed by Melville House (the fifth will see publication in early 2012). HE DIED WITH HIS EYES OPEN is the first installment in the series and is one of those nightmarish works that becomes unforgettable within the space of its first few pages, due in equal parts to its often shocking subject matter and the superlative quality of the author's literary style.

The "Factory" from which the series acquires its name is the headquarters of the London police A14, or Department of Unexplained Deaths. It is this unit of driven and dedicated detectives that is tasked with the investigation of the murders of the city's downtrodden, those lost to the shadows and worse. It is a dead-end division --- one rarely if ever rises above the rank of sergeant there --- and is considered to be a way station for the more ambitious investigators, a stepping stone on their way elsewhere.

The unnamed investigator who narrates the book is assigned to investigate the brutal murder of Charles Locksley Alwin Staniland, who is found on the side of a street in a downtrodden end of the city. The violence visited upon Staniland is seen as an indication of a fierce anger and hatred felt by the perpetrator for the victim. The detective is left with very little to work with, other than a hodgepodge of papers and a number of cassette tapes that constitute Staniland's personal effects.

The tapes are where the investigations begin; they contain a series of monologues --- some informative, some rambling, some almost feverish --- and, in a couple of cases, conversations with a woman named Barbara, with whom Staniland was involved in a destructive relationship. Staniland was an alcoholic who drowned his talents as a writer in spirits and whose impetuous actions resulted in the end of his marriage and the loss of his share of a family fortune, so that at the time of his death, he was only a step or so above squatting. It is only the unnamed detective who will speak for him in the end.

The investigation takes the detective, and the reader, to the rough edges of London and the even rougher individuals who populate it. His method of investigation is equal bits tough and (relatively) tender, relying on street smarts, intimidation and charm to open doors (among other things) and cajole information. His relationship with fellow law enforcement officers is interesting, to say the least, and occasionally the detective walks so close to the line between law enforcement and criminal that he appears almost ready to cross it. He doesn't, but his cuffs get soiled at times.

Raymond's prose hews an additional niche into the definition of "gritty," one that is dark and deep indeed. Aficionados of noir detective fiction who are thoroughly familiar with contemporary practitioners at the expense of knowledge of the last generation could do far worse than to start with Raymond and, more specifically, with HE DIED WITH HIS EYES OPEN, a book that is exciting and fresh some 30 years down the road.

Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

If you like slogging through the meaner streets of London, talking to people who really don't want to talk to you or deal with you in any capacity, then you should certainly apply to A14, the Unexplained Deaths department of the British Police. They deal with the cases nobody else wants, cases that will matter not to anyone if they ever get solved. A dead-end job if ever there was one. EYES OPEN follows the only member of A14, Detective Sergeant, as he tries to find the killers of Charles Sandiland, a middle-aged drunk who was killed slowly and painfully on a cold, rainy March afternoon. This is an excellent police procedural, wich characters that are so very real and so very unpleasant. The finale is fitting, and really there can be no other way to end this work.

A nameless police sergeant is assigned to investigate the violent death of Charlie Staniland, a 51 year old nobody. The sergeant is a dedicated cop stuck in Unexplained Deaths, a division that specializes in crimes committed against London's downtrodden and, for that reason, lacks the respect given to the divisions that specialize is more newsworthy crimes. The sergeant's blunt nature likely assures he will never be promoted; in the belief that "murder outranks rank," he regularly mouths off to uncooperative superiors who take no interest in the unglamorous cases he pursues.

As the sergeant listens to tapes Staniland recorded before his death, he discovers that Staniland became involved (rather impotently) with a woman named Barbara Spark after his wife left him. The sergeant talks with Staniland's brother, his ex-wife, his stepson, his former employers and co-workers, a bank manager, a bartender, Barbara's ex-husband -- all colorful, sharply rendered characters -- as he reconstructs the dead man's life. When he finally meets Barbara, his investigative approach is unconventional -- one might even say unprofessional. The plot eventually takes a turn toward the bizarre as we learn more about one of the characters than we might comfortably want to know.

This is a dark novel. Some of the characters want to be dead; some might as well be. Life has beaten them down. Crime is only a secondary source of darkness in the novel; life itself is the real culprit, life and its treachery, its false hopes, its broken promises. The sergeant is far from being a source of light in the surrounding gloom, although he has a degree of compassion that the other characters tend to lack. He is an uncommonly philosophical law enforcement officer, one who wonders "what the value of truth really was, if getting at it entailed so many lies." Although he doesn't stand out in the world of noir crime fighters, he's a solid entry.

Derek Raymond's prose style is efficient, biting, bleak, as hard and chilly as granite -- in other words, well-suited to the story he tells. Originally published in 1984, this is the first of Raymond's "Factory" novels and the first I've read. It won't be the last.

The conventional technique of the policer thriller takes second place in this novel. Nor is it really even a suspense book, though it has moments of suspense. The depiction of London though, is what makes it stand out for me. The ugliness of its postwar concrete precincts, and the ugliness of the people's psyches, are sketched in an unnatural harmony. As other reviewers have said, this book is about the textures of the seedy places in which the detective operates. You can almost smell the inside of the pubs, the exhaust fumes, the beer, the guinness, whiskey and sweat. My only difficulty was the use of excerpts from the murdered man's tape cassettes - at times these were powerful, but elsewhere, I wanted to be back on the street. Otherwise, a fine bit of writing from the edge of the abyss.

This is one classic slice of British noir. One reviewer compared the writing to Ellroy and I would agree. If the writing is like Ellroy, I would would compare Raymond's nameless Factory detective to Danny Upshaw, the sheriff's deputy from The Big Nowhere -- doggedly chasing down a case that no one seems to care about too much. There's also some Philip Marlowe in the empathy that the detective has and the way he finds something worthwhile about what was apparently a very sad and lonely man whose murder he's investigating.

If the ending seems over-the-top to you, then you haven't read many of the best crime novels! High drama and the dueling sides of everyone's personality are what makes much of the best noir tick. Check this one out for some honest appraisal of the darker side of life and how you can always glean some beauty out of the ugliness if you dig deep enough.

Character Development: I fell in love with the victim in this book. I learned about him through his tapes and like that he spoke honestly about his life and how he spent living it. I almost felt like figuring out who killed him was secondary to the book because I kept wanting to get to the parts where he reveals more about himself. That is good and bad.

Storyline: As I said above, finding out how he died became secondary to me. I was more interesting in discovering who the victim was while he was still alive. Having said that, the chase part of the story was also quite entertaining. We got to follow this cynical copper around while he interviewed people who didn't have very nice things to say about the victim, but shed more light on who he was.

Keeping of Interest: My interest was kept in the parts where the cop listens to the tapes. Those are the parts that I kept rushing to reach and missed once I finished reading the book. Some people will find those parts uninteresting as it really doesn't matter in the end - he is already dead after all. If you like reading into people's thoughts and private feelings, this is a good one for you.

Recommendation Rating: 3 out of 5