RaymondBundle

The Factory Series

Derek Raymond

Part of Melville International Crime

The series that revolutionized British noir

HE DIED WITH HIS EYES OPEN
THE DEVIL’S HOME ON LEAVE
HOW THE DEAD LIVE
I WAS DORA SUAREZ
DEAD MAN UPRIGHT

Audio of Derek Raymond reading from “The Factory Series”

Dora Suarez Opening 

The Final Reading of Derek Raymond (He Died With His Eyes Open) 

DEREK RAYMOND was the pseudonym adopted by Robin Cook, a well-born Englishman who spent a great portion of his life in France. Turning his back on Eton and all his birth class implied, he worked for years at whatever menial jobs or scams came to him, writing all the while, learning the secret life of London the way a cab driver must learn its streets. Soon enough he took the crime novel to heart, taking as his subject the dispossessed and faceless, society's rejects: alcoholics, abused women, prostitutes, petty criminals swarming like pilot fish in the wake of sharks. His life's work culminated in the four Factory novels now seen as clear landmarks in British fiction: He Died with His Eyes Open, The Devil's Home on Leave, How the Dead Live, I Was Dora Suarez, and Dead Man Upright.

Praise for Derek Raymond's Factory Series

"No one claiming interest in literature truly written from the edge of human experience, no one wondering at the limits of the crime novel and of literature itself, can overlook these extraordinary books."—James Sallis, author of Drive

"The Factory novels are certainly the most viscerally imagined of their kind that I've ever read, or reread multiple times.  Derek Raymond wrote in a supposedly escapist genre in a manner that precluded any hope of escape."
—Scott Phillips, bestselling author of The Ice Harvest

"There remains no finer writing – crime or otherwise – about the state of Britain."
—David Peace, author of "The Red Riding Quartet."

"Carve Derek Raymond’s name into the literary pantheon. He is one of the rare authors who seek to understand evil, ferret out the darkness in human nature, and blast Noir fiction out of the genre ghetto and into Literature. His nameless detective's quest through the bleak streets gets under your skin. Amazing, painful and brilliant."
—Cara Black, bestselling author of Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

"More Chandleresque than Chandler... [Raymond] could write beautifully...and, more importantly, what he is writing about in this novel are nothing less than the important subjects any writer can deal with: mortality and death."
—Will Self, author of The Quantity Theory of Insanity

“Beyond hard boiled.”
—Patton Oswalt

"The book is beautifully written, grimy as some of the characters are. Mr. Raymond is a master of the sharp vignette, the telling phrase, the speech patterns that perfectly describe a character. All of the people in his book are vividly alive."
—New York Times

"A crackerjack of a crime novel, unafraid to face the reality of man't and woman't evil."
—Evening Standard

"A gripping study in obsession and absolute, awful evil."
—Sunday Times

“A bizarre mixture of Chandleresque elegance. . . and naked brutality"
—Daily Telegraph

“Hellishly bleak and moving”
—New Statesman

“Raw-edged, strong and disturbing stuff”
—The Scotsman

"The beautiful, ruthless simplicity of the Factory novels is that Raymond rewrites the basic ethos of the classic detective novel."
—Charles Taylor, The Nation

"I cannot think of another writer so obsessed with the skull beneath the skin."
—The Times (London)

“Powerful and mesmerizing.... With spare, often lyrical prose, Raymond digs beneath society’s civilized veneer...”
—Publishers Weekly

"If you think of the act of writing as a game of chicken between the author and hes talent, then Derek Raymond is one author who achieves his ecstasy by sailing off cliffs. "Everything about I Was Dora Suarez shrieks of the joy and pain of going too far."
—Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review