john said, to Joy:
> Yes, the Peace novel form a quartet, 1974, 1977 and
1980 are already
> published, 1983 comes out later this year. 1977 is
maybe the best of the
> three so far published, but they're all great and
while they do work as
> stand alones you'll get more benefit from reading
them in
> order.
I think Peace would be a great reccomendation for UK noir,
because of the sustained excellence of the quartet, so far;
and, I think, it really really succesfully conveys the
atmosphere of England in the 70s-80s. Although far removed
from Yorkshire, and not of an age to really understand what
Prostitute really meant, I do have a very vivid memory of the
case of the Yorkshire Ripper (Peter Sutcliffe) etched into my
mind as a series of newspaper and TV headlines and images:-
Sutcliffe's bearded, dishevelled photograph on capture (or
anyway the one that was most commonly circulated), and grey
rainy streets with grey faced policemen scurrying around,
women saying they wouldn't go out at night. Even though in
far away Gloucestershire at the time, I remember feeling
scared for my mum. That photo of Sutcliffe probably has a
similar effect on me as the infamous Bradey and Hindley
photos of the mid-60s does on people of that age.
Peace obviously owes a debt to Ellroy, but his use of even
more modern and controversial history (I remember an
interview with him in which he said he knew there was more to
come out on the controversial investigation of the case, but
he was not the man to bring it out.) made his work even
starker to me. He also followed an Ellroyesque style, in
moving from fairly standard prose to a disjointed, jittery,
staccatto style (a la Tabloid and Cold6k), which I am sure
will provoke much discussion. Highly reccomended, very
British (very Yorkshire even), very dark and very disturbing,
enjoy. I read in the same interview that Mr Peace has now,
'done' Yorkshire and has married a Japanese woman and moved
to Tokyo where he says he will continue to write, but in a
new culture, the results should be interesting.
I'm not really sure where the best place to go to get
background on the Ripper case (it's not really necessary,
certainly not at the start of the series.) But maybe someone
can reccomend a site - although not central and not essential
the atmosphere of the time pervades the series.
Colin, open to correction.
-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 04 Jul 2002 EDT