Review of The Godwulf Manuscript by Robert Parker (1974, Houghton Mifflin)

Boston in the early 1970s.  A wise-cracking private investigator, Spenser has been hired by a university to recover the Godwulf manuscript, a rare medieval illuminated text.  His initial focus is a student radical group who oppose the forces of capitalism.  When one of their members calls him in the early hours he arrives at her apartment to find her heavily drugged holding a gun and her boyfriend shot dead.  She swears that he was killed by two men and the gun forced on her, but to the police it looks like an open and shut case.  Spenser, however, believes she might be telling the truth and her rich parents hire him to discover the truth.  Others though are not so keen for him to be meddling in their affairs.

First published in 1973, The Godwulf Manuscript is the first in the Spenser series that had reached book #40 by the time of Parker’s death in 2010 and also spawned a hit TV show and some TV movies.  Spenser, as introduced in the book, continues the hardboiled, American PI tradition of the wise-cracking, womanising, tough guy investigator, which is perhaps no surprise given Parker’s own interests in the private-eyes of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross Macdonald, on which he wrote his PhD dissertation.  While the theft of a medieval manuscript sounds like a relatively sedate case for a tough guy PI the tale soon shifts focus as Spenser tries to free a student framed for murder and tangles with both cops and the mob.  Never short of a wise-crack, Spenser manages to rub up the wrong way just about everyone he meets and progresses from one scrape to the next in the pursuit of justice.  A good example of oeuvre, tightly written and rattling along at a fair clip, the book is an entertaining read that will appeal to fans of hardboiled PI tales.

Review of 1974 by David Peace (Serpent’s Tail, 1999)

Eddie Dunford has moved back to north to the Leeds of his youth, working as the north of England correspondent for the Post. On the morning of his father’s funeral he is attending the press conference concerning the disappearance of a local school girl, Clare Kemplay. For Dunford this is an opportunity to establish himself at the paper and come out from under the shadow of Jack Whitehead, the paper’s award winning crime writer. His growing obsession, however, soon moves him from an interested observer into an active participant, a pawn in a much larger game of local business interests, politics and police corruption. The more he seeks out the truth, the further he descends into underworld, and others start to pay for the consequences of his actions.

Maxine from Petrona describes reading 1974 as like reading a scream. I know exactly where she’s coming from. Peace’s narrative is intense, visceral, gritty, dark, unrelenting and unsettling. It is very tightly written and through the flair and style of the prose, the contextual framing, and the palpable sense of realism, it produces a powerful affective response from the first page. If anyone is looking for the ultimate noir, then 1974 must be near the top of the pile. The story is a long way from horror, and none of the scenes are particularly horrific, but I nevertheless found it a difficult read at times, simultaneously feeling senses of compulsion and revulsion. It’s one of those strange books or movies that draws you in at the same time as pushing you away. I read it in several sittings and found it emotionally draining. The end unravels a little, becoming a bit disjointed (much like the main character). Nevertheless 1974 is a brilliant piece of writing, but it’s not for the faint hearted.

Reading a scream

Maxine from Petrona commented on my Sunday post about 1974 by David Peace that it's like reading a scream. As a very short book review that works perfectly. It's a while since I've been so unsettled by a book. I find myself reading it in 20 to 50 page chunks, then putting it down and thinking 'fuck'. It's a complete headwrecker - so intense, visceral and gritty. The subject matter is the usual fare for crime fiction, but Peace's style and flair, and the deep sense of realism, is very unsettling. It's difficult to explain. It's compulsive and repellent. It draws you in at the same time it pushes you away. The equivalent of watching a horror movie from behind cushions. I'm thirty pages from the end and I almost afraid to continue. Brilliant stuff, but should be sold with uppers.