One of the "Factory" series of bleak, atmospheric and subversive crime novels. Next door to the bloodied remains of London prostitute Dora Suarez lies the broken body of an 86-year-old widow, and a mile away the brains of a sleazy West End racketeer are found adorning the walls of his dining room.
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I Was Dora Suarez (Factory 4)
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Raymond's ( How the Dead Live ) nightmarish and compelling tale, the fourth in his Factory series, explores London's sordid underbelly, where the law enforcers have to be as brutal as the criminals they hunt. As the novel opens, 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 g 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 g 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.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
Praise for I Was Dora Suarez
“Everything about I Was Dora Suarez shrieks of the joy and pain of going too far.”
—Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review
"I Was Dora Suarez blew me away - beyond hard boiled."
—Patton Oswalt
Praise for Derek Raymond's Factory Series
"It’s one of the darkest and most surrealistically hard-boiled things I’ve ever read. The detective is at least as scary as the murderers he’s chasing."
—William Gibson, bestselling author of Neuromancer
"No one claiming interest in literature truly written from the edge of human experience, no one wondering at the limits of the crime novel and of literature itself, can overlook these extraordinary books."
—James Sallis, author of Drive
"The Factory novels are certainly the most viscerally imagined of their kind that I've ever read, or reread multiple times. Derek Raymond wrote in a supposedly escapist genre in a manner that precluded any hope of escape."
—Scott Phillips, bestselling author of The Ice Harvest
"There remains no finer writing – crime or otherwise – about the state of Britain."
—David Peace, author of "The Red Riding Quartet."
"Carve Derek Raymond’s name into the literary pantheon. He is one of the rare authors who seek to understand evil, ferret out the darkness in human nature, and blast Noir fiction out of the genre ghetto and into Literature. His nameless detective's quest through the bleak streets gets under your skin. Amazing, painful and brilliant."
—Cara Black, bestselling author of Murder at the Lanterne Rouge
"More Chandleresque than Chandler... [Raymond] could write beautifully...and, more importantly, what he i... --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.
“Everything about I Was Dora Suarez shrieks of the joy and pain of going too far.”
—Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review
"I Was Dora Suarez blew me away - beyond hard boiled."
—Patton Oswalt
Praise for Derek Raymond's Factory Series
"It’s one of the darkest and most surrealistically hard-boiled things I’ve ever read. The detective is at least as scary as the murderers he’s chasing."
—William Gibson, bestselling author of Neuromancer
"No one claiming interest in literature truly written from the edge of human experience, no one wondering at the limits of the crime novel and of literature itself, can overlook these extraordinary books."
—James Sallis, author of Drive
"The Factory novels are certainly the most viscerally imagined of their kind that I've ever read, or reread multiple times. Derek Raymond wrote in a supposedly escapist genre in a manner that precluded any hope of escape."
—Scott Phillips, bestselling author of The Ice Harvest
"There remains no finer writing – crime or otherwise – about the state of Britain."
—David Peace, author of "The Red Riding Quartet."
"Carve Derek Raymond’s name into the literary pantheon. He is one of the rare authors who seek to understand evil, ferret out the darkness in human nature, and blast Noir fiction out of the genre ghetto and into Literature. His nameless detective's quest through the bleak streets gets under your skin. Amazing, painful and brilliant."
—Cara Black, bestselling author of Murder at the Lanterne Rouge
"More Chandleresque than Chandler... [Raymond] could write beautifully...and, more importantly, what he i... --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gritty, Dark, Extraordinary,
By Geoff Byng (Australia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: I Was Dora Suarez (The Factory series) (Paperback)
This book brings us to the same dark, gritty, ignoble London that we know from movies like "Naked'. A bag lady, Dora Suarez, is brutally and shockingly murdered, and seedy, down-at heel cop Frank is the only person who thinks it matters. Plodding the dismal streets and speaking to people who do not care, he researches her life and death, becoming, because there is no-one else, the only person who ever cared for her. A compassionate book, a shocking book, an unjustly neglected book and one that will delight followers of detective and police fiction. One of the most twisted and evil villians in all literature.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Perverse, Intense and Ultimately Satisfying,
By POP "Noir By Night" (Hamsterdam) - See all my reviews
This review is from: I Was Dora Suarez (The Factory series) (Paperback)
This is the fourth book of Derek Raymond's (deceased unfortunately) acclaimed (and rather scarce) Factory series. The narrator becomes increasingly obsessed with the horrific life of the victim whose death he is investigating. The perversity of the life and death of Dora Suarez will shock any reader, no matter how hard-boiled your tastes. But the perversion isn't gratuitous and the story not without redemption at some level. As the subtitle of the book says:"The tragedy with help is that it never arrives." So if your tastes runs to hard-boiled, and you want to stray pretty far off the beaten path and you are willing to make the effort to slog through English english,find this book and read it, you won't regret it and you won't forget it.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Feel-good" novel of the year? Trite sarcasm aside...,
By A Customer
This review is from: I Was Dora Suarez (The Factory series) (Paperback)
In an age where post-modernism is, pathetically, worn on endless worthy, fashionably distressed sleeves, the contemporary novel would seem to have lost its capacity to shock. However, this novel might serve as a possible anodyne to such complacent musings. Inexorably disgusting, depressing and nihilistic...and yet... utterly compulsive...
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First Sentence:
Interrupted by her because she had come to see what was happening next door while he was still finishing up with the girl, the killer came up to the old woman without a word, got hold of her as if she were a load of last week's rubbish and hurled her through the front of her grandfather clock, which stood just inside the door of the flat, using strength that even he didn't know he had. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Interrupted by her because she had come to see what was happening next door while he was still finishing up with the girl, the killer came up to the old woman without a word, got hold of her as if she were a load of last week's rubbish and hurled her through the front of her grandfather clock, which stood just inside the door of the flat, using strength that even he didn't know he had. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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