Red Riding Nineteen Seventy Seven (Red Riding Quartet) [Paperback]

'Powerful, intense, gritty’

‘Peace’s writing style is incredible, he has a brilliant, unique voice’

'Simply superb Peace is a masterful storyteller, and Nineteen Seventy Seven is impossible to put down' Yorkshire Post. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

If you thought fiction couldn't get darker than David Peace's extraordinary debut, Nineteen Seventy Four, then think again. Nineteen Seventy Seven, the second instalment of the ?Red Riding Quartet?, is one long noir nightmare. Its heroes - the half decent copper Bof Fraser and the burnt-out hack Jack Whitehead - would be considered villains in most people's books. Fraser and Whitehead have one thing in common though, they're both desperate men dangerously in love with Chapeltown whores. And as the summer moves remorselessly towards the bonfires of Jubilee Night, the killings accelerate and it seems as if Fraser and Whitehead are the only men who suspect or care that there may be more than one killer at large. Out of the horror of true crime David Peace has fashioned a work of terrible beauty. Like James Ellroy before him, David Peace tells us the true and fearsome secret history of our times.

Leeds. Sunday 29 May 1977. It's happening again… Three years after the Strafford Shootings and little has changed in the dark world of west Yorkshire. Prostitutes are being murdered with grim regularity. Bob Fraser is a half-way decent copper in a police force as corrupt as it is brutal. Jack Whitehead is a burned-out hack in perpetual self-torment after the Exorcist killings. Both men are struggling to control their desperate infatuations with Chapeltown whores. When the two sevens clash… As the burning summer gives way to the bonfires of Jubilee Night, Fraser begins to suspect that the Yorkshire Ripper isn't the only killer in town. Whitehead is the only other man who even cares. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

'The finest work of literature I've read this year... extraordinary and original' Time Out 'Simply superb... Peace is a masterful storyteller, and 1977 is impossible to put down... a must-read' Yorkshire Post 'British crime fiction's most exciting new voice in decades' GQ The half-way decent copper Bob Fraser and the burnt-out hack Jack Whitehead - 1977's heroes - would be considered villains in most people's books. Fraser and Whitehead have one thing in common though - they're both desperate men dangerously in love with Chapeltown prostitutes. As the summer moves remorselessly towards the bonfires of Jubilee Night, the Ripper killings accelerate and it seems as if Fraser and Whitehead are the only men who suspect or care that there may be more than one killer at large. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

David Peace grew up in Yorkshire in the '70's and vividly remembers listening to the hoax tape of the Yorkshire Ripper on his way home from school. He was selected as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists 2003. He lives in Japan.