How The Dead Live

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This, the third novel in the Factory Series, sees Raymond’s nameless detective leave London for a remote village called Thornhill, where he’s meant to be looking into the disappearance of a local doctor’s wife.

How The Dead Live is a haunting, fantastical novel, with a hellish country house at its centre; a mystery with little interest in the mystery, a police procedural with almost no procedure. Instead, and as ever with Raymond, it’s a brilliantly unsettling investigation into love and damnation. This is life seen from the very bottom of the bottle – a fitting succesor to classic noir writers such as Jim Thompson and David Goodis.

‘A sulphurous mixture of ferocious violence and high-flown philosophy’ Prospect

‘Cook makes us see, that while we may cavort in the sunny uplands of life, the shades are always among us, flitting back and forth, seemingly without purpose, and yet slowly, insidiously, relentlessly, herding us towards the grave.’ Will Self

Intro by Will Self.

Guardian review