Customer Reviews

I Was Dora Suarez (Abacus Books)

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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.

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.

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...

I had been looking for this book for a very long time, more than 3 years--it was hard to find and out of print--it was not really worth the wait. The writing is clear and straightforward though not as horrific and certainly not as engrossing as I had heard. You'd be better off with almost any of Ross Macdonald or Raymond Chandler. There is a certain bleak beauty in the unnamed detective's quest for the killer. I didn't feel like I had read anything of sustaining value when I finished this book.

"Don't you see, the words sometimes take the place of tears?"

What if a true villain, a thoroughly evil psychopath, a man who already possessed a heart of darkness, who already scared evil men witless, then went mad? Fully and irredeemably insane. What depths of depravity, what inhumane crimes would he be capable of?

In I Was Dora Suarez, the fourth in Derek Raymond's Factory Novels we find out.

Be warned. This novel is not for the squeamish. This novel made it's publisher, who had already published the first three Factory Novels, vomit over his desk. Much to the glee of it's author, who himself was a bit of a mad man.

As with the other Factory Novels, Dora Suarez stars the unnamed, detective sergeant of London Metropolitan Police's, Department of Unexplained Deaths - The Factory, otherwise known as A14. Unexplained Deaths handles the `rough trade'. The investigation of the ugly murders of the average citizen and the dispossessed as opposed to The Department of Serious Crimes - Scotland yard - who get the glamorous investigations.

The novel opens with the brutal murder of Dora Suarez, a seemingly gentle young girl, and the kindly 86 year old widow, Betty Carstairs, who has taken her in. The reader gets a peek inside the mind of the killer and of his methods. "His eyes....bore the stare of someone entirely lost on the earth, and he was the most hideous thing that you prayed you might never see."

The detective sergeant is on suspension from the police for striking a superior officer. Insubordination comes easy to him, as he isn't a career ladder climber. He is called back on the job, all is forgiven, to handle this case as the police are short handed.

As the sergeant investigates, he immediately empathizes with the victim, and is deeply effected by the heinous details of the murder. Dora was repeatedly axed, one arm cut off before death as she pleaded with her murderer. As he investigates further it's discovered that the murderer ejaculated on Dora, and defecated on the scene. He also literally threw Betty through a clock. The sergeant also discovers a diary of sorts that, as he reads, makes him believe that Dora may have known her killer. The diary also reveals her innate gentleness in real life and that she was already dying and he develops an obsessive fondness and sadness for the dead woman . There's a sadness to Dora's life, the way that she has been repeatedly beaten down, used by life and the people in it.

During the autopsy, the extent of Dora's sickness is revealed to be advanced AIDS, but how she contacted it is not immediately apparent. It also becomes clear that the killer ate pieces of Dora post mortem.

Mean while, barely a mile away, another murder is being investigated by Stevenson, one of the sergeants few friends on the police. Felix Roatta has had his head blown nearly off, and the timing of the two sets of murders, as well as the nearness of the scenes, perks both their interest.

Roatta was a notorious gangster and part owner of the Parallel Club. A photograph is discovered taken at the club on Roatta's birthday with Dora singing on stage, and a man that the other criminal elements that haunt the club are reluctant to talk about.

As the clubs Greek doorman, and other criminal elements that had ownership interests in the club are detained and questioned, and as the degenerate offerings of the clubs "exclusive" upstairs rooms are revealed, the pure ugliness and subversion of decency make the sergeant and Stevenson more than determined to discover the identity and whereabouts of the murderer who even scares these hardened criminals.

This is where I usually talk about the authors craft. How well he uses literary devices, develops the characters and sense of place. Dialog and narration and all the other component parts of a good story. In the case of Dora Suarez, that would be superficial at best. Akin to criticizing the paints in Michelangelo's pallet or discussing the merits of the water that Monet used to soak his paper.

Raymond simply defines British Noir and in Dora Suarez created one of the most important pieces of crime fiction of the past fifty years. To paraphrase Raymond Chandler, Raymond has taken a cheap, shoddy and utterly lost kind of writing, and made of it something that intellectuals claw each other about. Paul Oliver at Melville House Publishing told me when he provided this review copy, Raymond "Wrote like John Donne if Donne had been taught how to write by Jim Thompson."

As an entry in the "hardboiled" genre, if bounced on the floor it would chip concrete. In the "Noir" field it is to "black novels" what black holes are to darkness.

As with most of The Factory Novels, it is only superficially a police procedural. And only nominally a mystery. Raymond's concern, and his protagonists, throughout the series was always more about the victim and what brought them to their fate.

To be sure the dialog is as elegant as Raymond Chandler, and the basic story line as good or even better at uncovering the fault lines of society than Hammett at his best.

The sergeants dialog is hard violent, and insolent, and never approaches the realm of civil discourse whether he is talking to the politically motivated higher ups, the lowly bobbys on the beat who wish to play at being a cop or to the dregs of criminal society, whether they be witnesses or suspects.

In contrast to his violent exterior is an almost psychotically sacred level of concern for the victim. In the words of the author, he "describes men and women whom circumstances have pushed too far, people whom existence has bent and deformed. It deals with the question of turning a small, frightened battle with oneself into a much greater struggle -- the universal human struggle against the general contract, whose terms are unfillable, and where defeat is certain."

First published in 1990, I Was Dora Suarez was the fourth of five Factory Novels published and considered the master work of Raymond's career. Rereleased in September by Melville International Crime and available singly or in a set consisting of the first four novels, with the fifth offered free when it is published in January.

No one seriously interested crime fiction as literature, noir written as taut, ugly and teetering on the edge of sanity can possibly pass this one by.

the Dirty Lowdown

Derek Raymond's Factory Series details the investigative efforts of an unnamed protagonist, a Sergeant in The Department of Unexplained Deaths, aka A14. This Department handles the murders of the victims no one cares about, the crimes that aren't going to grab any headlines or make anyone's career.

The Sergeant shares many traits with other crime fiction lead. He has little regard for authority, runs his mouth when he shouldn't, and cares more for "justice" than any sort of career advancement. But, unlike most detectives, it's the depth of the Sergeant's anguish that pushes him toward justice and vengeance.

The series could vaguely be referred to as police procedures, but these are nothing like the novels of Ed McBain or episodes of Law & Order. While the murders are solved, the Sergeant's investigations always shine more light on the disenfranchised victim than detailed specifics of a murder caper or investigative methods. Often the Sergeant must know the victim, inside and out, before "clues" fall into place. This can sometimes slow the pacing for the reader, especially ones used to more action-driven fiction, but by turning the victims into real people, Raymond invests his crimes with far more breadth and emotional punch than any convoluted, television murder scheme can offer.

The prose, I think, eases any feelings of boredom. It's starkly poetic and painfully human. Raymond excels at giving emotions voice, at bringing the hurt and the lost vividly to life. While you may never know the color of someone's eye, you know what it was like to look into them and what shaped that no empty space beyond.

I Was Dora Suarez is the next to last in The Factory series. It's easily both the most moving and most disturbing crime novel I've ever read. Our unnamed narrator's rage and despair punch you hard in the gut. This book is not for the faint of heart. This is an intense and graphic story. Sure, I'd imagine if you're a fan of the current crop of gore porn flicks or deeply enjoy detailed serial killer fictions, you'll just shrug. But Raymond does something neither of those two things do if you allow him, he brings Dora Suarez to life as a human being. And if you are not moved and saddened by the fate of poor Dora then I would suggest that there is probably something incredibly wrong with you.

This is crime fiction at its best: poetic, real, dark and deeply visceral. This is the "Black Novel" at its blackest.

Just might leave certain readers scarred for life. Not for the weak of mind or belly.
Derek Raymond was one of the best in the genre.