Nineteen Eighty (Red Riding Quartet #3)

This is the 3rd blook in the Red Riding quartet, which starts with 1974 and picks up every three years after. The quartet revolves around police corruption in Yorkshire where, as one of the bent policemen says: \’this is the North and we do what we want\’. Starting with 1974 and the search for several young missing girls, it moves on to the time when the area was terrified by the Yorkshire Ripper, who mainly killed prostitutes. There\’s a question of whether some of the women killed were vicitims of the Ripper or of corrupt policemen trying to cover their behavior. Newspaper reports, priests, crooked cops and honest ones all get sucked into a vortex of corruption that boggles the mind. Families are descimated, a woman is raped by police officers in front of her husband before he dies. If only a small percentage of what these novels portray are true, it must have been a horrible experience to be picked up by the police. The corruption is so complete, so deep that the police are operating their own pornography empire with prostitution and porn magazines and rationalize that they are \’comtaining\’ it by controlling it. They aid and abet local businessmen in their pursuit of money and get their fingers in all the pies, including local builders putting up an indoor mall. I have to admit that sometimes the ethereal quality of the writing made it difficult to follow the action and sometimes it required a second reading (as well as watching the films that were based on the books). Despite that the books were compelling and even when the actions were horrifying, it was impossible to put down. It\’s worth the time and trouble to read them; no question they\’re challenging. But they\’re also beautifully written.

My favorite book of the series. It not only gives an ending to the story, but explains the history of the corruption of the Yorkshire Police Department. This book is told through the POV of three different characters. Maurice \’the Owl\’ Jobson, one of the heads of the corruption. You see his conscious eat away at him in the present as well as how he got pulled into the cover-ups and money making at the very beginning. Solicitor John Piggot, who is handling the appeal of the person arrested for the child murders in 1974. When a new girl is abducted the person arrested in 1974 wants to prove his innocence. John learns some interesting things about his past through his investigation. The final narrator is Barry \’BJ\’ Anderson, rentboy, and the key that ties all the stories together. Every character goes through their own personal Hells, and no one leaves the series unscathed. I don\’t normally read 4 books in a row by the same author, but Peace has written a very good series, and I\’m sad that there aren\’t any more to read. I will definitely be picking up Peace\’s other books. A word about the BBC adaptations of the books. They are extremely different. I only saw the 1974 movie, but it was vastly different from the book. I read spoilers on the other two films on Wikipedia, and they are very different from the books. I want to see the films, but I highly doubt they will as good as the books.

Book three of the Red Riding Quartet. David Peace is really doing something amazing with this series. I felt that there was something in this book that I was missing. I didn\’t figure it out until earlier this week when I was about 100 pages away from the end of the book. *****SPOILER START******** The serial killer, who is the focus of the story, does not kill anyone in this book. The police discuss his crimes, but the only people killed during the time frame of the book are murdered by the corrupt police force to cover up their crimes. *****END SPOILER****** This book centers on Peter Hunter, a clean cop brought in to form a team of outsiders to rework the Yorkshire Ripper case. He\’s also asked to look into anything else he sees in the Yorkshire police force. Having read the two previous books I knew things would not end well for Peter. And yeah, the stuff does hit the fan. I\’m really enjoying Peace\’s writing style. Almost like James Ellroy, but different enough to not be a clone. This book was very dialogue heavy, and that made it a pretty fast read. I\’m going to move on and start Nineteen Eighty-Three today. I don\’t remember the last time I read four books in a row by the same author. This is new territory for me.

I just finished reading this book last night and I am blown away by this book series. Each book is better than the last one and continues to build on the story and the tension. The world Peace has created in this series is full of predators and victims but seems to be devoid of any heroes. There is one line on page 246 of the book that just breaks my heart; \”and they say there is no greater pain than to remember in our present grief past happiness but e will tell you the greatest pain is to remember in our present grief past grief and only grief\” I will be reading book four in the series directly and I will be reading all of David Peace\’s work that I can get my hands on!

I don\’t need an author to supply an \”Agatha Christie\’ solution to a mystery (or say it was \’Miss Peacock in the library with the candlestick!). But when one invests the time and energy to read a 1417 page series of four novels and STILL only has a very vague idea of what the heck happened, something is missing in the author\’s arsenol. The stylistic \’tics\’ are also somewhat annoying (the endless repetitions slow things down enormously, and are not as poetic or evocative as Peace intends). That said, the books DO keep one\’s interest, and individual scenes are electrifying … I just wish the books hadn\’t left me totally confused and in the dark as to who did what to whom … also it doesn\’t help when there are literally THREE characters named Clare, three named Bob, and three named Peter…which is incredibly confusing and shows not only a lack of imagination, but a somewhat sadistic attitude towards one\’s readers…

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