Nineteen Seventy Four

Red Riding Quartet

By: David Peace

Narrated by: Saul Reichlin

Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins

Publisher's summary

Jeanette Garland, missing Castleford, July 1969. Susan Ridyard, missing Rochdale, March 1972. Claire Kemplay, missing Morley, since yesterday. It’s winter, 1974, Yorkshire, Christmas bombs, Lord Lucan on the run, the Bay City Rollers, and Eddie Dunford’s got the job he wanted – crime correspondent for the Yorkshire Evening Post. He didn’t know it was going to be a season in hell. A dead little girl with a swan’s wings stitched into her back. A gypsy camp in a ring of fire. Corruption everywhere you look.

In Nineteen Seventy Four, David Peace brings passion and stylistic bravado to this terrifyingly intense journey into a secret history of sexual obsession and greed, and starts a highly acclaimed crime series that has redefined how the genre is approached.

David Peace (born 1967) is an English author. He was named one of the Best of Young British Novelists by Granta in 2003 and won the 2004 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. He is also known for his novels GB84 and The Damned United; the latter was made into a feature film starring Michael Sheen.

*Please note this audiobook contains explicit language.

©2000 David Peace (P)2010 Audible

Critic reviews

" Nineteen Seventy Four is raw and furiously alive, the literary equivalent of a hard right to the jaw. David Peace has delivered the finest crime fiction debut of the year and joined a select group of novelists who are transforming the genre with passion and style." (George Pelecanos)

"Quite simply, this is the future of British crime fiction." ( Time Out)

"The pace is relentless, the style staccato-plus and the morality bleak and forlorn....Peace's voice is powerful and unique." ( Guardian)

Miss Marple this is not

More like Silence of the Lambs. Although I'm not offended by graphic sex and violence and the use of the *F* word, there is a self consciousness or heavy handedness about its over use that just doesn't ring true. This keeps a gripping and troubling story from being 5 stars in my opinion.

Disappointing

I found this book rather hard to follow. I am not certain if I will be listening to any more in the series.

Flawed, but good

These books are great, but definitely not for everyone. The story bounces around and the big picture never gets perfectly cleared up like you would usually find. These were the writing experiments of a first-time author and it shows. The writing gets better as the books continue, but the story itself is gripping the whole way through.

The narration is good, but probably not the best casting decision for this one. The book is in first-person, yet the reader sounds a generation (or two) older than the character he's portraying most of the time.

If the concept intrigues you, but the style isn't for you, I would suggest watching the films instead. They're fantastic.

P.S. This book is loaded with very explicit language. I wouldn't think that would be off-putting for a series entirely about rape and murder, but other reviewers seem to disagree. So of you are somehow alright with graphic descriptions of child rape, but upset by frequent uses of the C-word, you have been warned.

Violent but good reading

At first I found the violence, especially toward women, hard to listen to, but the plot is very good in the final balance.

Too bad

WAY too much use of the f word for my taste. The story is good but nearly deleted it because of the constant and repetitive cursing.

Raw Crime Pursuit

Too violent, raw, and brutal. I had to keep restaring the beginning three chapters repeatedly to understand the story.

Disturbing, Distressing & Extremely Dark

1 star for the book & 1 star for the reader who was the only reason I could get through it. Vulgar in the extreme. The ending was sickening. My 1st audible listen and I cancelled my account afterwards.

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Zero Stars

I was really excited to listen to this book after reading the strong Audible recommendation and I was thrilled it was part of a series. Unfortunately I do not think this book translated well to the audible format. The first person narrative jumps between dreams, reality, and memories with little or no warning which can be a little confusing at times. However the extreme violence and a touch too much urine and vomit did translate very clearly. I couldn't wait for it to end as I found almost none of the characters likeable, including Eddie Dunford, and the ones I did were all murdered before the end of the book.

Awful

This is my first review ever after hundreds of books over many years. This book was so unnecessarily disgusting that the story never really evolved. For the first time I couldn't finish the recording. I finally decided that life was too short to spend time on this much unpleasantness. Skip it.