Nineteen Seventy Four (The Red Riding Quartet) - Softcover

Peace, David

3.62

5,748 ratings by Goodreads

9781852427412: Nineteen Seventy Four (The Red Riding Quartet)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1852427418 ISBN 13: 9781852427412

Publisher: Serpent's Tail, 2000

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Jeanette Garland, missing Castleford, July 1969. Susan Ridyard, missing Rochdale, March 1972. Claire Kemplay, missing Morley, since yesterday. Christmas bombs and Lucky on the run, Leeds United and the Bay City Rollers, The Exorcist and It Ain?t Half Hot Mum. It?s winter ,1974, Yorkshire, and Ed Dunford?s got the job he wanted. Crime correspondent for the Evening Post. He didn?t know it was going to be a season in hell. A dead little girl with a swan?s wings stitched into her back. In Nineteen Seventy Four, David Peace brings the passion and stylistic bravado of an Ellroy novel to this terrifyingly intense journey into a secret history of sexual obession and greed.

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Review:

From the very first page of David Peace's first novel, 1974, it soon becomes clear that something is rotten in the state of Yorkshire: a young girl is missing.

The Yorkshire Post's young but disillusioned crime correspondent, Edward Dunford, is assigned to the story, while juggling the recent death of his father and the return to his native Yorkshire after a brief, unsuccessful stint in Fleet Street. For the jaded Dunford, it's just another story; the only intrigue is whether or not the girl will be found dead or alive before Christmas. That is, until the girl is discovered brutally murdered, face down in a ditch with a pair of swan's wings sewn into her back.

As Dunford follows the case, he begins to make a series of terrifying connections with a string of child murders, plunging him into a gut-wrenching nightmare of corruption, violence, sadism, blackmail and sexual obsession--from the upper echelons of local government to the tacky heart of Yorkshire darkness.

As Peace's tale of corruption and conspiracy unravels, it becomes clear that 1974 is as influenced by Orwell's own bleak vision of Britain in 1984 as it is by the wonderfully evoked atmosphere of the mid- 70s. The Bay City Rollers, Leeds United, It Ain't Half Hot Mum and Vauxhall Viva's all make an appearance. The novel works at several levels, from the brilliantly unsentimental homecoming of the gifted, alienated northern son, to a terrifyingly accurate portrayal of an insular, tribal community. The plot is complex and frenetic and Peace often leaves strands untied, especially as he builds to an extremely powerful climax. Yet the dialogue is fast, witty and violent; a must read for fans of Yorkshire Gothic. -- Jerry Brotton

Review:

?Breathless, extravagant, ultra-violent... Vinnie Jones should buy the film rights fast? Independent on Sunday

Peace has found his own voice ? full of dazzling, intense poetry and visceral violence (Uncut ?David Peace?s stunning debut has done for the county what Raymond Chandler and James Ellroy did for Los Angeles?This is a brilliant first novel written with tremendous pace and passion? Yorkshire Post ?One hell of a read? Crime Time)

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