I Was Dora Suarez

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An axe-wielding psychopath carves young Dora Suarez into pieces and smashes the head of Suarez’s friend, an elderly woman. On the same night, in the West End, a firearm blows the top off the head of Felix Roatta, part-owner of the seedy Parallel Club.

The unnamed narrator, a sergeant in the Metropolitan Police’s Unexplained Deaths division, develops a fixation on the young woman whose murder he investigates. And he discovers that Suarez’s death is even more bizarre than suspected: the murderer ate bits of flesh from Suarez’s corpse and ejaculated against her thigh.

Autopsy results compound the puzzle: Suarez was dying of AIDS, but the pathologist can’t tell how the virus was introduced. Then a photo, supplied by a former Parallel hostess, links Suarez to Roatta, and inquiries at the club reveal how vile and inhuman exploitation can become.

‘A pioneer of British noir… No one else has come near to matching his style or overwhelming sense of madness.’ The Times

‘If you think of the act of writing as a game of chicken between the author and his talent, then Derek Raymond is one author who achieves his ecstacy by sailing off cliffs. Everything about I Was Dora Suarez shrieks of the joy and pain of going too far.’ New York Times

3:AM Magazine review