Non mi ha entusiasmato né coinvolto più di tanto, piuttosto dispersivo e puntato principalmente sulla vita della vittima attraverso l’ascolto delle registrazioni ritrovate nella abitazione.
Una storia che alla fine lascia anche delle ombre sulla soluzione e un protagonista solitario che agisce oltre anche oltre il lecito.
Un po’ diverso dal solito e da quello che preferisco tanto che per il momento non credo che proseguirò con la serie. ( )

Great, gritty street driven noir from UK in the 80s(?). Narrator is fascinated by a murdered man who left cassette tapes with his dark observations about the world and his life. He (murdered man) was generous, thoughtful, deep and drawn to dark things. We see his life collapsing (through the tapes) and detective plumbs through his low life haunts - bars, dirty jobs, filthy apartment, etc. and ultimately it all comes together. He was "ruined" if you want to call it that by a cruel femme fatale - Babsy/Barbara - who treats him awfully/insultingly - bringing men home to their dive, etc.. He almost seems to enjoy the base humiliation / cuckolding. Detective (of course) has to meet and fall for the same femme fatale, so we (audience) can experience her dubious charms ourselves. Yes, it is indulgent and self serving (how deep these men are- how heartless these women (!)) but that is (partly) what art is for, right? self justification. Anyhow maybe 5 starts is too much but I will carry on for sure with this Factory series. ( )

He Died With His Eyes Open is the first of what became known as the Factory series of detective novels where the Factory is the ugly grey police station in London that houses the anonymous narrator.

The book starts, like all good detective stories, with the discovery of a body. It's 1984 and London is an unforgiving landscape of unemployment and violence. Our detective is physically sickened by the amount of violence that has been perpetrated against this particular victim who appears to have endured it all without closing his eyes.

The case is not a promising one and several times the detective is mocked by his superior, Inspector Bowman, for not wrapping things up quickly and seeking promotion with easy to solve headline cases.

Instead the detective devotes hours to a set of recordings left behind by the murdered Charles Locksley Alwin Staniland. The recordings tell of a disappointing man who has been abandoned by his wife and child and left to drink too much and seek love and companionship in places he had better left undiscovered.

The detective chases down all the available leads and immerses himself deeper into Staniland's life that is healthy. Rather than being solved the crime seems to fester like an untreated boil until lanced.

Throughout the telling there is an oppressive sense of despair, futility and menace which rings true from my own memories of the 80s. In this week of the death of Margaret Thatcher, I have been trying to out into words the sense of hopelessness that she presided over. This grim novel written contemporaneously perfectly captures the spirit of the time.

It's a hard book to like. It's frequently foulmouthed and brutally frank about sex. The violence is appalling and simultaneously detached. I think it's a great snapshot of its time and I may well dig up the subsequent Factory books just to see where the no-name detective goes from here. ( )

Derek Raymond (aka Robert Cook) has a biography almost as fascinating as his novels. He smuggled oil paintings, got thrown in Spanish prison for badmouthing Franco, drove fast cars, lived with the beat poets in the fifties, was interrogated by Dutch police, and then wrote British noir.
Raymond published five novels in his nameless detective Factory series and these excellent novels are unique in their format and tone. The narrator is a British detective who works unsolved cases, cases no one in the Department of Unexplained Deaths could give a lesser damn about. He spends an enormous amount of time in these cases, delving into the victim's character and lives, trying to understand what happened.

A man is found on the side of the road, beaten with a hammer, stabbed with a knife, and made to suffer a long slow death. Who was he and who hated him so much? Our detective listens to a series of cassette tapes left by the victim in the form of a diary and tries to understand who this man was and who had it in for him. As it says in this diary, "Anyone who conceives of writing as an agreeable stroll toward middle-class lifestyle will never write anything but crap." On the way, he brings Britain of the early eighties alive with punks, mods and rockers, junkies, people living as squatters and on the dole.
There may not be the kind of action here present in most detective novels, but it is a smooth, talented read that is worth reading far more than once. This detective is rude, sarcastic, overbearing and altogether one of the most unique characters ever. ( )

He Died With His Eyes Open by Derek Raymond was originally published in 1984 and this author is considered one of the pioneers of British Noir. The story is set in the gritty underside of London as a nameless Detective hunts for the murderer of a down and out writer who is found at the side of the road but had obviously been beaten and tortured to death. This is the first book in a series of four called The Factory series and all feature the nameless detective who works for the Department of Unexplained Deaths.

The victim left behind a series of cassettes that enabled the detective to dig deep into his life and question all his acquaintances one by one until he was able to zero in on the guilty party. Unfortunately I never quite bought into this story, the cassettes were too convenient, giving the victim a voice and a personality that otherwise would not have been so clearly known.

He Died With His Eyes Open was very well written. The author easily showed the evil that can exist in a person by his sharp, precise writing and descriptions. The main character is a policeman who refuses to compromise but he also refuses to follow the rules and allows his investigation to take some wildly inappropriate turns. I found myself admiring the style of this book much more than the actual substance. I have another of these books on the shelf and will certainly give it a try but I am not ready to commit to the rest of the series at this point. ( )