Let me start with a pair of stories about when I recommended
it to
others. First, there was an old girlfriend. It was in the
early days
of our relationship and she asked me what kind of stuff I
read. I told
her violent crime books. She was a fan of vampire books so
she asked me
to recommend a serial killer book. I gave her Silent Terror
by Ellroy.
She read it and liked it, but said that wasn't that bad,
wasn't that
sick. I said, oh, you want sick, here's Dora Suarez. I
expected her to
be repulsed; she couldn't put it down. She really liked it
and
recommended it to a few people herself. Another person I gave
the book
to (actually the spoken word version) is a fan of horror as
well as
hardboiled. I expected her to love it and ask me if he had
written
more. She gave me the tape back, saying ti was just too much
for her.
Several of my friends are as fanatical about Raymond as I am,
though.
So I guess you can't really predict who will and who will not
like him,
but those who do get somewhat fanatical.
Dora Suarez is one of, if not the, most violent books I've
read. I
found the violence very disturbing, but necessary. (I never
was
entirely sure about exactly what the killer was doing with
his
masturbatory apparatus, but I didn't really want to know
more.)
Raymond's is a different writing style than much hardboiled,
kind of a
degree zero writing, very matter of fact, little or no
engagement. This
is particularly evident in Raymond's reading of the book,
which is very
monotonic and reserved British sounding.
I'll wait to comment more until after I have re-read
it.
Mark
ps -- someone recently wrote that Robin Cook was Derek
Raymond's
pseudonym. Actually, it's the other way around. He wrote
several books
in the 1960s, but then stopped. By the time he began writing
again in
the 1980s, the other Robin Cook, the medical thriller writer
had become
popular, so this Cook adopted the name Derek Raymond.
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