Red Riding Trilogy by Julian Jarrold, James Marsh & Anand Tucker

My review of the Red Riding Trilogy from directors Julian Jarrold, James Marsh and Anand Tucker is up at spinetingler.

Give it a look HERE.

If you haven't read the Red Riding Quartet by David Peace and are a fan of James Ellroy you'll probably wanna do that shit up first.

But don't let anybody tell you what to do. The world? It's YOUR fucking oyster, my man.

Catching Up #51: Tokyo Year Zero by David Peace

There’s no getting around that David Peace is a great storyteller and prose stylist, but there’s also no denying that you have to psyche yourself up to read his shit. Tokyo Year Zero is an especially tall order, what with the chanting, repetitive prose style and incessant Japanese names, places and phrases (there’s even a glossary at the back of the book and a map of Tokyo in the front), but it’s also very rewarding and - when you’re up for it and with the rhythm - it’s a visceral, mind-fuck experience like few books you’ll ever read.

Tokyo Year Zero is based on the true story of the Kodaira Yoshio, a serial killer and rapist who carried out his particular brand of nasty in the year following Japan’s defeat at the Americans in WWII. Our narrator is Detective Minami, a desperate man with debts to the local mob boss, a sleeping pill addiction, a mistress, a near-starving wife and kids, and a shady past. While Minami investigates the strangling deaths of numerous young women in and around Tokyo, he’s also trying to keep his affairs and life in order, with often violent, hair-raising consequences.

Now, seeing how I just told you who the fucking killer is, you might be thinking of telling me to go fuck myself first, vowing to never read this book now that it’s been spoiled for you second. But I assure you, dear reader, that shit is not spoiled. They figure out and catch Kodaira PD-fucking-Q, and then it’s merely a matter of working through the limited resources and infuriating bureaucracy to connect him to other bodies and missing person reports. The real mysteries and thriller-ish aspects of the novel come from Minami’s affairs outside of the investigation involving the local mob boss and a shady fellow detective on the force.

And what really makes this shit sing is the world Peace establishes. His depiction of U.S.-occupied Tokyo post-firebombing is basically fucking hell on earth. Evidence of destruction and chaos is on every street and within the hearts of every citizen. It’s a world where you can’t afford not to be corrupt, where rice and jewelry are worth more than money, where prostitution and thievery are often the best – if not the only – options.

Hell, the book's worth it just for the insight into how the Tokyo police department conducts business. There’s a fantastic discussion early in the book where the brass bitch about how the Americans are forcing them to adopt their western interrogation tactics, complaining about how they now have to have evidence and a charge before they arrest and beat the shit out of a suspect. The book is just packed with kick ass lore and commentary like that.

But as I said, this shit can be hard to read at times. When you’re ready for it and you just fucking get it, you’re flying through the pages and completely in tune with Minami, reeling at every twist and turn just like he does. But it’s hard to keep up such a grueling pace, to speed through such a dense and complicated story, and the names and fucked-up style and Japanese phrases and glossary-checking can slow your ass down and make the reading feel like a chore. But then you’ll hit your stride again and burn through a section like you’re on meth and the book is your dirty carpet that can’t seem to get clean no matter how much bleach and elbow grease you dump on that motherfucker.

So basically I’m saying you should fucking stick to it, dear reader. Don’t read this while in the middle of another novel because when the going gets tough and you haven’t picked up Tokyo in a while, it’ll be fucking daunting-as-shit to get back into it. Like an Ellroy novel (I’m required by law when reviewing a David Peace novel to mention James Ellroy’s name at least once), you have to bring a lot to the book itself, but your careful reading and investment no doubt pays off in fucking spades.

Catching Up #14: NINETEEN SEVENTY SEVEN by DAVID PEACE

So I just blasted my way through David Peace's second offering in the Yorkshire Quartet, Nineteen Seventy Seven, and it has flooded my brain with some interesting questions about what makes a noir successful.

If you've been following this blog like an obsessive nerd (somebody out there is, I hope), then you have probably noticed that my personal favorite crime novels are ones that are both ambitious within the parameters of the genre while also meeting the essential requirements of hardcore violence, sex, suspense, and the like. This novel certainly is of that sort. It transcends (hateful choice of words, I know) its genre with its stylish prose and attention to historical detail, its sheer poetic-ness (how delightfully unpoetically put, Nerd), while giving you badass main characters, lots of shocking violence (REALLY SHOCKING) and even more shocking sex (most of which is of the rape-y variety).

But how far is too far when it comes to such ambitions? What is the point at which there is too much of the literary ambition and not enough of the satisfying pulp? This book, I think, takes the "high art" elements just a bit too far.

(Another example where this happened for me was with Dead I Well May Be by Adrian McKinty. He's got a great story and a great setting in there but he over-writes and over-writes until I had to start skimming. So much description and he had such an obvious love of his own clever voice that I could barely take it. If I were the editor I would have cut about a third of that shit out. Yes, I realize this is an unpopular opinion.)

The story follows two bad dudes looking for the Yorkshire Ripper, a killer (possibly killers) chopping up whores in disgusting ways. Jack Whitehead is a reporter for the Yorkshire Post who is mourning the mysterious death of his last girlfriend and generally coasting through his job drinking and fucking whores until the Ripper story brings him somewhat out of his funk. Bob Fraser is a detective with a wife and kid who is invested in the Ripper case for the safety of his mistress, a sexy prostitute that he cannot get enough of. Both these men doggedly follow the case, and uncover all sorts of corruption in the process.

Now Nineteen Seventy Seven is sure as hell entertaining and a quick enough read, but it left me feeling rather angry. Yeah, the story arc of the two main characters is brought to a pretty satisfying conclusion, but (MAJOR SPOILERS!!!): the Yorkshire Ripper is not identified in the end.

Naturally, this book is part of a series and the next two books will hopefully bring the story to some sort of conclusion, but I was really not prepared for absolutely no major break in the case to happen. I thought there would at least be SOMETHING conclusive to tide me over until the next book but nope. Not in the cards. What if I had read this when it first came out? I would be fucking pissed. I also wasn't prepared for this because the first book, Nineteen Seventy Four, actually had a conclusion to the mystery at the center of the story. I guess that's what I thought all the books would be about, a different serial killing in each book involving some of the same characters and possibly all connecting up in some way in the end. I was wrong.

I mean, if I had just read the back of Nineteen Eighty I would have known that the Yorkshire Ripper case was not closed at the end of Nineteen Seventy Seven but I refused to do that because, you know, who likes spoilers?

So I really think that Peace sort of crossed the line in a rather daring way but I just found it sort of maddening. It was a bold fuck you to the reader, something I often enjoy, but not here. That said, I still enjoyed the rest of the book and found it entertaining and am dying to know who the Ripper is. But I'm still kind of angry, sort of miffed.

I think I might take a break from the Quartet, come back to it after reading something else so that I can be more excited than slightly pissed. It was a really good book and had some truly great moments (the masturbating interrogation made me want pour bleach on myself in the shower), but it clearly left a bad taste in my mouth because of the lack of answers. Even those of us who are up for a challenge in their pulp fiction want a somewhat of a bone thrown their way now and then, especially with the ending.

Catching Up #13: NINETEEN SEVENTY FOUR by DAVID PEACE

For all you paranoid noir lovers out there lemme just say this:

I, the Nerd of Noir, am not receiving any monetary or sexual favors from Serpent's Tail Independent Publishers. Not that I'm like, you know, above that sort of thing, but I swear I'm not. It is mere coinkydink that I've been reading so many of their books lately. I swear on the coke bottle lenses of my dorky glasses and my original copy of The Kill-Off. No money or bodily fluids have changed hands or orifices. Also of concern: I have not emigrated to the U.K., nor have I given up black coffee for tea.

With that out the muthafuckin waaaayyy... David Peace's Nineteen Seventy Four just kicked my ass and then spit in my bloody, gaping eyesocket. This is my first Peace book and damn, dude can write. This is the darkness, the depths, the despair, the dire, the fucking low-goddamn-down, my dear nerds. In the words of Senator Clay Davis, "Sheee-it!"

Nineteen Seventy Four is the story of our most humble narrator Edward Dunford, crime reporter for the Yorkshire Post, a right prick of a man who has just landed the front page story of a missing ten-year-old girl, a case shockingly similar to two other little girl disappearances a few years back. Oh, by the way, the year of our story is, amazingly, the year of our lord nineteen and seventy-four, imagine that. Anyway, Dunford is trying to get the scoop on the latest disappearance from the corrupt police department while keeping his hot story out of the hands of ace reporter (and world-class douchebag) Jack Fucking Whitehead. It doesn't take long before sure enough, the little girl lost cases turn out to be related and the cover-ups go all the way to the higher-ups, the big boys of power!

Now, I know what you're thinking, "Nerd, I've glanced at your stupid little site before and it seems to me that you don't much cotton to mysteries and serial killer thrillers." Well, confoundingly southern-ish imaginary reader, you're right, I'm not big on mysteries or serial killer stuff, but this is more along the lines of the great exalted James Ellroy than to local boy John Sanford. Think The Black Dahlia (not De Palma's interesting misfire, Ellroy's first masterpiece of many) instead of Silent Prey or whatever book my Minnesota bro wrote last. Yeah, there are elements that qualify it as part of that not-my-thing serial killer mystery camp, but the most obvious comparisons are to Ellroy. Shit, look at the fucking book jacket and that's the first thing that'll catch your eye, the blurbs relating Peace's Yorkshire Quartet to Ellroy's L.A. Quartet. Well, I'm with the choir on this one.

And that is some damned high praise, not praise that even an over-caffeinated fanboy like myself tosses off lightly.

Peace does some crazy shit in this book, not as crazy as Ellroy but awfully damned close. You won't have any insane shocks like your protagonist getting killed half-way through the book or whatever but his stuff is hyper-dark just the same. It's ultraviolent, oversexed, and packed with cynicism and dread. The language is punchy and staccato, but moves faster than say, The Cold Six-Thousand where though the sentences are short, you have to over-think every little word in some passages. No, with 1974 the sentences just fly by like a Charlie Huston novel.

Another similarity is that your protagonist is also a fucker and a half who is generally a dick to almost every in the book, and not in a cool tough guy way either. He treats women ridiculously poorly and when he really starts getting in over his head he makes some terrible decisions. But he isn't totally irredeemable. Awfully damned close, mind you, but not totally.

Also like an Ellroy opus, this book has one labrynthine bitch of a plot. Shit gets complicated and I'm not sure it totally works itself out in the end. You get the big picture ending for sure, but certain little events and secrets are never fully explained to my liking when the dust clears. But you don't really notice such things until the book is over and the dust has settled since you're too busy racing alongside Eddie as he runs from one horrifying revelation to the next.

I'm already started on book two in the quartet, Nineteen Seventy Seven, and good lord is it awesome as well. The craziest thing so far is this: Jack Fucking Whitehead is one of the protagonists this time out! That guy's a douche! I guess I'll have to learn to like him this time out, though. One of your enemies is the hero? Doesn't get much Ellroy-ian than that right there.

Rock on, Peace, you sick, demented man.