Just finished He Died With His Eyes Open by Derek Raymond. It's a dark, noir tale set in London in the early 1980s, that very much has a hardboiled PI feel about it, although the main protagonist is a Sergeant in the London Met. It has an interesting conversational tone to it at times. For example, the start.He was found in the shrubbery in front of the Word of God House in Albatross Road, West Five. It was the thirtieth of March, during the evening rush-hour. It was bloody cold; and an office worker had tripped over the body when he was caught short going home. I don't know if you know Albatross Road where it runs into Hanger Lane, but if you do you'll appreciate what a ghastly lonely area it is, with the surface-level tube-station on one side of the street, and dank, blind buildings, weeping with damp, on the other.
I don't know Albatross Road, as it happens (and a quick scout of Google Maps reveals I never could, although Hanger Lane W5 exists). But my mind's eye has had a pretty good go at imagining it.
My posts this week
Spitting on a Soldier's Grave by Robert Widders
Dallas crime fiction
Berlin at War by Roger Moorhouse
Programme for Government/Minister for Housing and Planning
Seattle crime fiction
"This book represents a ‘William Gibson moment’ for the critical social sciences."
I've had a copy of that book on my TBR pile for some time. Worth reading? You don't really say.
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