I Was Dora Suarez by Derek Raymond (1990)
Not for the faint-hearted!
About as far as you can get from the British ‘cosy crime’ novels of the Miss Marple variety and still be in England green and pleasant land.
This is the fourth in the Factory series by Derek Raymond and features the mostly 1st person narrative of the un-named Detective Sergeant who is investigating the death of the prostitute Dora Suarez, the butchering of an 86-year-old woman and the shotgunning of a racketeer. They are connected and it is the D.S.’s job to find out how and why before he gets too obsessed for his own good.
Actually the first 26 pages are not from the D.S.’s point of view but from the killer’s and they are probably the most graphic description of murder you are likely to read outside of a ‘true crime’ book.
He wrote 4 other ‘Factory’ (the nickname of the Police Station the Detective Sergeant works out of) novels – ‘He Died with His Eyes Open’, ‘The Devil's Home on Leave’, ‘How the Dead Live’ and ‘Dead Man Upright’ before his death in 1994.
Derek Raymond’s real name was Robin Cook and his own life story as recounted in his autobiography ‘The Hidden Files’ is as interesting as any fiction and a great deal more so than some.
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