Nineteen Seventy Seven

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Ultimately disappointing - Rated
As they would probably say in Yorkshire, "what the bloody hell was all that about?" Having now read two of this author's books, I feel I have sussed his technique which is to use the vagueness of abstraction to disguise lack of plot and inconsistency of storyline.

Strip away the "clever" switching of character telling the first person narrative and the italicised prose and the dream sequences and you have left something that doesn't quite add up. Back to the Yorkshie vernacular and I would say that Mr Peace is "too clever for his own good".

What could be a very gripping, sexy, noir and grity novel is spoilt for me by some unnecessarily complicated literal trickery. I enjioyed 1974 but by the time I was half way through 1977 I got very tired of his technique. The ending was totally baffling and, I suspect, made abstract to compensate for the absence of plot.

Northern noir for those who like their meat very rare - Rated
West Yorkshire. Silver Jubilee. Yorkshire Ripper. A bent copper. Drunken journalist. Whore lovers. Corruption. Mutilation. HATE. HATE.

Not an easy read, and not a comfortable one, but an absolutely compulsive, rivetting psychological/procedural noir novel with a rock-solid grasp of location. Everyone else says it so I suppose I'll have to - Peace writes in a style similar to James Ellroy (the parts of the book narrated by Bob Fraser remind me in particular of Ellroy's Dave Klein in "White Jazz") and covers similar subject matter; but Peace has a distinct voice and a different agenda to Ellroy.

A superb and chilling novel. Unmissable.

Sensational Sequel - Rated
Nineteen Seventy Seven is the second in Peace's Yorkshire Quartet; four books that chronicle the secret history of Yorkshire from the Seventies to the Eighties. I'm a big fan of the first book, Nineteen Seventy Four and this sequel is even better. Set against the background of the Silver Jubilee, foul weather, punk and reggae sounds, this is the harrowing but engrossing tale of a journalist and a policeman who are sucked into the devastating spiral of despair caused by the crimes of the Yorkshire Ripper. The prose and plotting are simply superb, the former verging on a kind of brutal but beautiful poetry. Quite simply Nineteen Seventy Seven is the best novel of any genre I've read since his last book. Bring on the next!