Dead Man Upright

May 7, 2012
First published in the U.K. in 1993, Raymond's fifth and final Factory novel (after 1990's acclaimed I Was Dora Suarez) pungently evokes the British underworld. Acting on a tip from a retired colleague, the series' hero, an unnamed detective sergeant in London's low-rent Unexplained Deaths department, begins investigating the mysterious Ronald Jidney, whose girlfriends have a tendency to vanish after several months. Even as the detective tries to warn away Ronald's latest flame, Ann Meredith, Raymond has already revealed that Ronald is a psychopath who seduces and murders middle-aged women. Due to a clinical tone markedly unlike the feverish earlier novels and extracts from Ronald's punishingly long statement, readers new to Raymond, the pseudonym of Robert Cook (1931â1994), would be advised to start with an earlier entry. Established fans, however, will find the detective's despairing inner monologues on the state of the world just as forceful as ever.

May 1, 2012
The final installment in the Factory series finds the unnamed narrator, a London detective sergeant, trying to get the goods on a serial killer before he takes another life. But here's the twist: the nameless detective has a pretty good idea who the next victim is, and the woman doesn't seem to be all that interested in saving her own life. Like the previous four Factory novels, the book is gritty, grotty, dirty, smelly, and noisy. This is no British cozy. It's no secret that the Factory novels are designed to expose the unsavory underbelly of England in the Margaret Thatcher era, but contemporary readers (this novel was originally published in 1993, after its author's death) might respond more to the book's very modern feel. Its opening scenes, told from the killer's point of view and containing some strikingly graphic imagery, would be at home in, say, an episode of TV's Criminal Minds. For fans of Raymond's dark and compelling mystery fiction, this one is a must-read.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)