Review
"'A crackerjack of a crime novel, unafraid to face the reality of man's and woman's evil' Evening Standard 'A unique crime writer whose fictional world was brutal, realistic and harrowing in the extreme' Maxim Jakubowski, Guardian 'Peopled by a fast-talking shower of queens, spades, morries, slags, shysters, grifters and grafters of every description, The Crust on its Uppers is one of the great London novels' New Statesman 'A State of Denmark is a fascinating and important novel by one of our best writers in or outside of any genre' Time Out"
Product Description
When a middle-aged alcoholic is found brutally battered to death on a roadside in West London, the case is assigned to a nameless detective sergeant, a tough-talking cynic and fearless loner from the Department of Unexplained Deaths at the Factory police station. Working from cassette tapes left behind in the dead man?s property, our narrator must piece together the history of his blighted existence and discover the agents of its cruel end. What he doesn't expect is that digging for the truth will demand plenty of lying, and that the most terrible of villains will also prove to be the most attractive. In the first of six police procedurals that comprise the Factory series, Derek Raymond spins a riveting, and vividly human crime drama. Relentlessly pursuing justice for the dispossessed, his detective narrator treads where few others dare: in the darkest corners of London, a city of sin plagued by unemployment, racism and vice, and peopled by a cast of low-lifes, all utterly convincing and brought to life by Raymond?s pitch-perfect dialogue.
