David Peace

Jeanette Garland, missing Castleford, July 1969. Susan Ridyard, missing Rochdale, March 1972. Claire Kemplay, missing Morley, since yesterday. Christmas bombs and Lord Lucan on the run, Leeds United and the Bay City Rollers, The Exorcist and It Ain't Half Hot Mum. It's winter, 1974, Yorkshire, and Eddie Dunford's got the job he wanted - crime correspondent for the Yorkshire Evening Post. He didn't know it was going to be a season in hell. A dead little girl with a swan's wings stitched into her back. In Nineteen Seventy Four, David Peace brings the passion and stylistic bravado of an Ellroy novel to this terrifyingly intense journey into a secret history of sexual obession and greed, and starts a highly acclaimed crime series that has redefined how the genre is approached.

Red Riding Nineteen Seventy Four

There’s no escape. This book is cold-hearted, corrupt, violent, and beautiful. You’ll not want to finish it, and wish you never started it. Everything is connected. By blood, pain, madness, and grief. 

It’s a cruelty that such horror - such vivid, pulsing, casual, brutishness - can come from someone with Peace for a surname. David Peace is a very interesting writer. He’s been compared with Ellroy, and this book brings the fever-pitch blood madness of the Underworld USA series into the mid-70s misogyny, racism, and institutionalised police brutality. His Japanese novels are also worth a read. 

Jan Jackson

There’s no escape. This book is cold-hearted, corrupt, violent, and beautiful. You’ll not want to finish it, and wish you never started it. Everything is connected. By blood, pain, madness, and grief. 

It’s a cruelty that such horror - such vivid, pulsing, casual, brutishness - can come from someone with Peace for a surname. David Peace is a very interesting writer. He’s been compared with Ellroy, and this book brings the fever-pitch blood madness of the Underworld USA series into the mid-70s misogyny, racism, and institutionalised police brutality. His Japanese novels are also worth a read. 

Sian Wadey

I had seen the first of the Red Riding Trilogy before I read this book. As usual, I didn't know there was a book that came first but wanted to delve into this violent world, full of deception, back handers and bent cops. 
As soon as you start reading you're sucked in. The pace in this book is insatiable and before you realise it you're flying through the chapters. The main character in 1974 is Eddie Dunford, a young journalist, doing his best to become the latest crime correspondent. As a reader, you sympathise with Dunford, but like every character in this book, he's flawed. You can hear yourself telling him not to do the stupid things he sometimes does. Dunford uncovers a conspiracy that everyone seems to be involved in and from then on, only bad things can happen.
The story itself is intriguing, brilliantly written and takes your breath away. Peace doesn't shy away from violence which makes this book seem all more real and creates a wealth of believable characters. The only reason this book is four stars is because at some points it can be quite confusing. A lot of characters have similar sounding names and at a few stages in the story I had to turn back and check names and events. Despite this, I'm looking forward to reading the next books!

Red Riding Nineteen Seventy Four

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