Red Riding Nineteen Eighty: Red Riding Quartet
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Review
'Set in a world in which black comes in many shades, this powerful, stark and strangely poetic series is turning into a considerable achievement' Guardian.
Review
'Set in a world in which black comes in many shades, this powerful, stark and strangely poetic series is turning into a considerable achievement' Guardian.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Peace's Red Riding Quartet is rapidly turning from The British Crime Series into the best British Quartet ever, regardless of genre. I have never read anything quite like it. Each book is different from the last and they just get better and better. Nineteen Seventy Four was full on,in yer face Ultra Noir, Seventy Seven was like Dickens imagining Ellroy in an opium dream. And Eighty, well you just want to read the first so-called Transmission. From the British Ellroy to the New Dante in two books. This man is our best writer, period. Read him.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
David Peace has carved himself a niche in contemporary English fiction, by taking real events and turning them into intensely personal and disturbing narratives. In the process he has proved himself to be a stylish and highly distinctive writer. True, his work can be an acquired taste and at times veers into the obscure, but there aren't many writers at work today who have such a personally developed voice.
1980 is the third part of his acclaimed Red Riding Quartet, set in the north of England between 1974 and 1983. Like the books before it, 1980 is set in a world of corruption and violence, and like the previous two installments features a protagonist struggling with the horror of the reality before him whilst battling his own personal demons.
Peter Hunter is an Assistant Chief Constable in Manchester, sent over to Leeds to ostensibly help in the search for the Yorkshire Ripper, but also to critically study the investigations that have gone before.
As in all of the quartet a familiar cast of characters weave in and out of the plot, Bob Craven, The Dawson family, Maurice Jobson, Jack Whitehead, and their actions in the first two books have repercussions here.
Anyone who has read 1974 and 1977 will recognise the frenetic pace, the intensity of the internal monologue and the visceral, violent subject matter. This, more than the others can stand alone as a piece of fiction. Although it would help to have an understanding of the whole set you could pick this novel up and appreciate it as a singular novel.
To me though, this is the most accomplished out of 1974, 1977 and 1980. Peace seems more in control of his style and story than in the previous books. While he has maintained the hallucinatory style there is more clarity to the subject matter, and although this is not an easy read it is certainly more so than its predecessors. 1977 in particular suffered in this respect, having two narrators and a lack of differentiation between their voices.
1980 feels more restrained, if you could ever refer to Peace's work as restrained. His trademark repetition is used to a brilliant effect, particularly in the breathless, exhilarating finale. In the final third of the book, where his style usually obliterates the content, he expertly crafts a series of twists that never seem contrived, but instead clarify and justify that which has come before.
I finished this book with my jaw on the table and if you are unsure about reading it after struggling through 1974 and 1977, I would strongly urge you to do so. This is a whisker away from being a masterpiece.
1980 is the third part of his acclaimed Red Riding Quartet, set in the north of England between 1974 and 1983. Like the books before it, 1980 is set in a world of corruption and violence, and like the previous two installments features a protagonist struggling with the horror of the reality before him whilst battling his own personal demons.
Peter Hunter is an Assistant Chief Constable in Manchester, sent over to Leeds to ostensibly help in the search for the Yorkshire Ripper, but also to critically study the investigations that have gone before.
As in all of the quartet a familiar cast of characters weave in and out of the plot, Bob Craven, The Dawson family, Maurice Jobson, Jack Whitehead, and their actions in the first two books have repercussions here.
Anyone who has read 1974 and 1977 will recognise the frenetic pace, the intensity of the internal monologue and the visceral, violent subject matter. This, more than the others can stand alone as a piece of fiction. Although it would help to have an understanding of the whole set you could pick this novel up and appreciate it as a singular novel.
To me though, this is the most accomplished out of 1974, 1977 and 1980. Peace seems more in control of his style and story than in the previous books. While he has maintained the hallucinatory style there is more clarity to the subject matter, and although this is not an easy read it is certainly more so than its predecessors. 1977 in particular suffered in this respect, having two narrators and a lack of differentiation between their voices.
1980 feels more restrained, if you could ever refer to Peace's work as restrained. His trademark repetition is used to a brilliant effect, particularly in the breathless, exhilarating finale. In the final third of the book, where his style usually obliterates the content, he expertly crafts a series of twists that never seem contrived, but instead clarify and justify that which has come before.
I finished this book with my jaw on the table and if you are unsure about reading it after struggling through 1974 and 1977, I would strongly urge you to do so. This is a whisker away from being a masterpiece.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The third in Peace's series of dark and dirty police thrillers, set in West Yorkshire and definitely the best so far. Covering the year in which the Yorkshire Ripper was at last apprehended, the novel adheres very closely to the facts of the case, going back in great detail over all of the Ripper's killings. Peace changes the names of the victims, some of the locations (but not all) and the identities of people most involved in the case. George Oldfield, becomes George Oldman, Peter Sutcliffe becomes Peter Williams. Oldfield's fixation on the Ripper tape and a man with a Geordie accent is covered, as are the details of many of Sutcliffe's crimes, his modus operandi and his background as a lorry driver.
There is an over-reliance, as in the other books in this series, on a kind of lyrical frenzy for effect, but this time it seems at least partly justified. As anyone who lived through the "Ripper years" could testify, the shock and disbelief as the killings mounted leant a kind of hyper-reality to the fall of night, especially towards the end of the series of murders, when Sutcliffe was as likely to murder a woman nipping to the shops as a prostitute plying her trade.
There is less gratuitous obscenity in this third book, perhaps because the reality of these obscene crimes renders it redundant. The main protagonist is another copper - and the background of corruption and cynicism is ever-present, but this time it seems muted. Perhaps not every copper in the force is bent?
The Ripper denied doing some of the murders the police had him down for, and in this novel Peace pins them on a corrupt copper. Suicides are abundant, cover-ups just par for the course. It is a dark, disturbing vision of the business of being a detective in the English police force. Having read this book, one could be forgiven for eyeing every policeman with dread and suspicion.
There is an over-reliance, as in the other books in this series, on a kind of lyrical frenzy for effect, but this time it seems at least partly justified. As anyone who lived through the "Ripper years" could testify, the shock and disbelief as the killings mounted leant a kind of hyper-reality to the fall of night, especially towards the end of the series of murders, when Sutcliffe was as likely to murder a woman nipping to the shops as a prostitute plying her trade.
There is less gratuitous obscenity in this third book, perhaps because the reality of these obscene crimes renders it redundant. The main protagonist is another copper - and the background of corruption and cynicism is ever-present, but this time it seems muted. Perhaps not every copper in the force is bent?
The Ripper denied doing some of the murders the police had him down for, and in this novel Peace pins them on a corrupt copper. Suicides are abundant, cover-ups just par for the course. It is a dark, disturbing vision of the business of being a detective in the English police force. Having read this book, one could be forgiven for eyeing every policeman with dread and suspicion.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Terse edgy thriller not for fainthearts
This book mixes fact and fiction and follows the fortunes of a policeman in the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper, a maniac who killed at least 13 women in the north of England between... Read more
Published 8 months ago by John Fitzpatrick
Glued
My wife was glued to these books and her initial bewilderment was relieved by book 4 which explains the previous 3.
Horribly true to its times, a very good read indeed.
Horribly true to its times, a very good read indeed.
Published 13 months ago by Captain Nemo
CtrlC, CtrlV
Truman Capote dismissed the work of Jack Kerouac with the phrase "That isn't writing; it's typing".
David Peace has taken this to the next phase - This isn't writing;... Read more
David Peace has taken this to the next phase - This isn't writing;... Read more
Published 14 months ago by JPGruntfuttock
As bad decisions go......
I watched the TV adaptation of these books and thoroughly enjoyed them (especially Sean Bean, and I normally avoid anything with him in it) so based on this, and the premise that a... Read more
Published 16 months ago by M. J. Nash
Peter Hunted
Peter Hunter is the man called in from Greater Manchester Police to clean up the mess that is the West Yorkshire Police Force. Read more
Published on 22 April 2010 by bloo_toon_red
Red Riding - Challenging and Very Rewarding
Wonderful read, so many things going on right across the quartet of books. There's history through the eras that the books cover - Thatcher, riots, the terror that the Yorkshire... Read more
Published on 18 Mar 2010 by P. James
Earthy, gritty, compelling.
I bought this quartet on the back of the TV drama. It differs slighty from the drama but for those who have come to the books for the first time, I don't think you will be... Read more
Published on 20 Dec 2009 by john burns
The pace roars ahead
The third book of the Quartet is arguably the strongest yet - the pace picks up as the plot pieces from the previous book begins to slump into place. Read more
Published on 22 Oct 2009 by F. Wight
It's Grim Up North
The third in the quartet, you will need to have read the previous two to follow this dense, dark, continuation of the "faction" of events surrounding the investigation of the... Read more
Published on 21 Aug 2009 by Page Surfer
Red Riding Quartet
You could write volumes about this extraordinary quartet. My guess is that you will either love it or hate it. I was totally engrossed from start to finish. Read more
Published on 10 Aug 2009 by David Smith
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