First published in 1962, The Crust On Its Uppers, Derek Raymond's first novel (written when he was Robin Cook) is a gripping tale of class betrayal. With ruthless precision, and a great deal of humour, it brings vividly to life a London of spivs, crooked toffs and bent coppers.
'It's a tale of someone who wanted to go and go-who was sick of the dead-on-its-feet upper crust he was born into, that he didn't believe in, didn't want, whose values were meaningless, that did nothing but hold him back from his first nanny onwards. I wanted to chip my way out of that background which held me like a flea in a block of ice, and crime was the only chisel I could find.' First published in 1962, The Crust on Its Uppers, Derek Raymond's first novel (written when he was Robin Cook) is a gripping tale of class betrayal. With ruthless precision, it brings vividly to life a Britain of spivs, crooked toffs and bent coppers - in fact, a Britain that in its bare essentials has changed little over the last 30 years.
When a middle-aged alcoholic is found brutally battered to death on a roadside in West London, the case is assigned to a nameless detective sergeant, a tough-talking cynic and fearless loner from the Department of Unexplained Deaths at the Factory police station. Working from cassette tapes left behind in the dead man's property, our narrator must piece together the history of his blighted existence and discover the agents of its cruel end. What he doesn't expect is that digging for the truth will demand plenty of lying, and that the most terrible of villains will also prove to be the most attractive. In the first of six police procedurals that comprise the Factory series, Derek Raymond spins a riveting, and vividly human crime drama. Relentlessly pursuing justice for the dispossessed, his detective narrator treads where few others dare: in the darkest corners of London, a city of sin plagued by unemployment, racism and vice, and peopled by a cast of low-lifes, all utterly convincing and brought to life by Raymond's pitch-perfect dialogue.
In this book, the reader is immediately plunged into the horrific mind of one of the most brutally damaged and murderous killers the unnamed Detective Sergeant has ever faced: a deranged axe-murderer. But why the victim--the gentle Dora Suarez--was murdered at all becomes the Sergeant's obsession, especially as he digs deeper into a diary she left behind and learns she was already dying of AIDS. So why kill her?
It is the 1960s. England has become a dictatorship, governed by a sly, ruthless politician called Jobling. All non-whites have been deported, The English Times is the only newspaper, and ordinary people live in dread of nightly curfews and secret police. Richard Watt used all his journalistic talents to expose Jobling before he came to power. Now in exile in a farmhouse amid the cruel heat of the Italian countryside, Watt cultivates his vineyards. His remote rural idyll is shattered by the arrival of an emissary from London. Derek Raymond?s skill is to make all too plausible the transition from complacent democracy to dictatorship in a country preoccupied by consumerism and susceptible to media spin. First published in 1970, Raymond?s brilliant satire is as dark and frightening as ever.
Booklist Top of the List Reference Source The heir and successor to Eric Partridge's brilliant magnum opus, The Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, this two-volume New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English is the definitive record of post WWII slang. Containing over 60,000 entries, this new edition of the authoritative work on slang details the slang and unconventional English of the English-speaking world since 1945, and through the first decade of the new millennium, with the same thorough, intense, and lively scholarship that characterized Partridge's own work. Unique, exciting and, at times, hilariously shocking, key features include: unprecedented coverage of World English, with equal prominence given to American and British English slang, and entries included from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, South Africa, Ireland, and the Caribbean emphasis on post-World War II slang and unconventional English published sources given for each entry, often including an early or significant example of the term’s use in print. hundreds of thousands of citations from popular literature, newspapers, magazines, movies, and songs illustrating usage of the headwords dating information for each headword in the tradition of Partridge, commentary on the term’s origins and meaning New to this edition: A new preface noting slang trends of the last five years Over 1,000 new entries from the US, UK and Australia New terms from the language of social networking Many entries now revised to include new dating, new citations from written sources and new glosses The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English is a spectacular resource infused with humour and learning – it’s rude, it’s delightful, and it’s a prize for anyone with a love of language.
"A legendary crime novelist."--The Sunday Times A plainclothes cop in Paris, Kleber is forty years old and devoted to his young wife, Elenya, a former prostitute whom he rescued from her pimp. He is embittered by twenty-two years on the streets, and his sleep is haunted by dreams of death. Kleber has many enemies, and only one friend: a criminal named Mark. When Kleber is suspended from the police force for punching a fellow officer, his underworld enemies seize their chance to get even.
Never before available in the U.S., the final episode in the Factory Series is another unrelenting investigation with the nameless detective into the black soul of Thatcher’s England. The fifth and final book in the author’s acclaimed Factory Series was published just after Derek Raymond’s death, and so didn’t get the kind of adulatory attention the previous four titles in the series got. The book has been unavailable for so long that many of Derek Raymond’s rabid fans aren’t even aware there is a fifth book. But Dead Man Upright may be the most psychologically probing book in the series. Unlike the others, it’s not so much an investigation into the identity of a killer, but a chase to catch him before he kills again. Meanwhile, the series’ hero—the nameless Sargent from the “Unexplained Deaths” department—is facing more obstacles in the department, due to severe budget cutbacks, than he’s ever faced before. However, this time, the Sargent knows the identity of the next victim of the serial killer in question. But even the Sargent’s brutally blunt way of speaking can’t convince the besotted victim, and he’s got to convince a colleague to go against orders and join him in the attempt to catch the killer... before it’s too late.