Category Archives: Serpent’s Tail
There is no future in England’s dreaming
Nineteen Seventy Seven, by David Peace David Peace’s debut novel Nineteen Seventy Four was not an easy read. It was bleak even by the standards of noir. The style was staccato, heavily influenced by Ellroy and the imagery at times … Continue reading
Filed under British Crime Fiction, Crime Fiction, Noir, Peace, David, Serpent's Tail
We all have our weak moments
I was Dora Suarez, by Derek Raymond Noir fiction is moral fiction. Noir is the examination of the horror under the surface of society, and a condemnation of the society which permits that horror. I was Dora Suarez is the … Continue reading
Filed under British Crime Fiction, Existentialism, Hardboiled, Noir, Raymond, Derek, Serpent's Tail
It was winter, and it was dark.
The Prone Gunman is Jean-Patrick Manchette’s most famous novel translated into English, though since only two of his novels have been translated that’s not perhaps saying too much. Both The Prone Gunman and earlier novel Three to Kill have been … Continue reading
The social relations of production
Three to Kill is a 1976 slice of extraordinarily black French noir fiction, written by Jean-Patrick Manchette and translated in the Serpent’s Tail edition by Donald Nicholson-Smith. It was brought to my attention by Guy Savage over at the His … Continue reading
Pity, terror and grief
At its best, crime fiction is moral fiction. It is a forensic examination of the relationship between the individual and society, of our obligations to each other and of the gap between our image of ourselves and our shabby truth. … Continue reading
Filed under British Crime Fiction, Existentialism, Hardboiled, London, Noir, Raymond, Derek, Serpent's Tail
The coke sweat had been dutifully airbrushed from the mayor’s forehead; only a contaminated grin remained
A Firing Offence is the 1992 first novel of George Pelecanos, later to become (relatively) well known as a scriptwriter for The Wire. It forms the first of his three part Nick Stefanos series, a trio of novels dealing with … Continue reading
Filed under Crime Fiction, Hardboiled, Pelecanos, George, Serpent's Tail, US Literature
I knocked at a second-floor flat in a dreary house, one of two hundred in a dreary Catford street.
So starts the second of Derek Raymond’s factory novels, The Devil’s Home on Leave, uncoincidentally enough the second Derek Raymond novel I have read and while for me not as interesting as his first (He Died with His Eyes Open, … Continue reading
Filed under British Crime Fiction, Existentialism, Hardboiled, London, Noir, Raymond, Derek, Serpent's Tail
To be an animal that thinks persistently in terms way beyond its lifespan sets us a frightful problem.
And a problem for which He Died with his Eyes Open by Derek Raymond has no comforting answers. He Died with His Eyes Open is a novel I read some months back, I’m covering it here as it is the … Continue reading
Filed under British Crime Fiction, Existentialism, Hardboiled, Noir, Raymond, Derek, Serpent's Tail
THIS IS THE NORTH. WE DO WHAT WE WANT!
Originally posted 11 July 2008. Since I’m still only part way through my current read, At Lady Molly’s (which is volume 4 of Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time) I thought I’d post some thoughts on a … Continue reading
Filed under British Crime Fiction, Crime Fiction, Noir, Peace, David, Serpent's Tail
