August 29, 1990
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.
September 1, 2008
First published in the U.K. in 1990, Raymond's searing fourth entry in his Factory series (The Devil's Home on Leave
, etc.) opens with a psychopath hurling an old lady to her death against her grandfather clock—just after he took an ax to young Dora Suarez in a neighboring flat. That same night, the killer shoots Felix Roatta—part-owner of a seedy London club, who's expecting money from the killer—with a gun loaded with a soft-tip bullet (“The upper part of Roatta's head entirely disappeared”). Matters wind up in the hands of an unnamed narrator, a police sergeant, who (à la Laura
) begins to develop an unhealthy fixation on Dora. Though some may find the sanguinary detail overdone, it's somehow rendered a shade less objectionable when translated into the British idiom. Raymond (1931–1994) was a prime practitioner of the not-so-gentle art of murder, Brit-style, and if anyone wants a sample of his wares, this is a fine place to start.