Nineteen Seventy Seven

David Peace's acclaimed Red Riding Quartet continues with this exhilarating follow-up to Nineteen Seventy-Four. It's summer in Leeds and the city is anxiously awaiting the Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth's reign. Detective Bob Fraser and Jack Whitehead, a reporter at the Post, however, have other things on their minds-mainly the fact that someone is murdering prostitutes. The killer is quickly dubbed the “Yorkshire Ripper” and each man, on their own, works tirelessly to catch him. But their investigations turn grisly as they each engage in affairs with the prostitutes they are supposedly protecting. As the summer progresses, the killings accelerate and it seems as if Fraser and Whitehead are the only men who suspect or care that there may be more than one killer at large.

Amendment one hundred and twenty two makes it legal to kill the president of the United States - corporate sponsorship makes it highly profitable. Washington DC, 2150. Deep within the White House basement Archer powers up today’s Mayfly - a short-lived sentient humanoid bodyguard designed to protect the President from the electorate. Only Archer seems to care that the Mayfly will likely fail in her duty, just like every other Mayfly this month - after all there are plenty more death row inmates eager to stand for election. Frustrated and powerless, Archer’s desire to increase the Mayflies’ effectiveness - by extending their 48 hour life expectancy - will drive him to take ever greater risks, bringing him into conflict with powerful vested interests and creating dangerous enemies. Set in a future world of next-generation technology, connected devices, augmented reality and sentient machines, Running Mate is a fast-paced, darkly humorous blend of Black-Mirror, WestWorld and The West Wing. From the mind of a long-time video game developer and senior software engineer, the future laid out here is terrifyingly plausible and uncomfortably familiar.

Red Riding Nineteen Eighty is set against an evolving backdrop of power, corruption and lies. The nightmare continues during the winter of 1980 when the Ripper murders his thirteenth victim and the whole of Yorkshire is terrorised. Assistant Chief Constable Hunter struggles to solve the hellish crimes and bring an end to the horror, but is drawn ever deeper into a world of bent coppers and sleaze. After his house is burned down, his wife is threatened and his colleagues turn against him, Hunter's quest becomes personal as he has nothing left to lose. Nineteen Eighty is a compelling battle between two desperate men, each determined to destroy the other. This third volume of the Red Riding Quartet displays Peace's unique voice which places him as one of the UK's finest crime writers.

Nineteen Eighty Three's three intertwining storylines see the Quartet's central themes of corruption and the perversion of justice come to a head as BJ, the rent boy from Nineteen Seventy Four, the lawyer Big John Piggott - who's as near as you get to a hero in Peace's world - and Maurice Jobson, the senior cop whose career of corruption and brutality has set all this in motion, find themselves on a collision course that can only end in a terrible vengeance. Nineteen Eighty Three is an epic tale which concluded an extraordinary body of work confirming Peace as the most innovative and remarkable new British crime writer to have emerged for years.

If you thought fiction couldn't get darker than David Peace's extraordinary debut, Nineteen Seventy Four, then think again. Nineteen Seventy Seven, the second instalment of the Red Riding Quartet, is one long nightmare. Its heroes - the half decent copper Bob Fraser and the burnt-out hack Jack Whitehead - would be considered villains in most people's books. Fraser and Whitehead have one thing in common though, they're both desperate men dangerously in love with Chapeltown prostitutes. And as the summer moves remorselessly towards the bonfires of Jubilee Night, the killings accelerate and it seems as if Fraser and Whitehead are the only men who suspect or care that there may be more than one killer at large. Out of the horror of true crime, David Peace has fashioned a work of terrible beauty. Like James Ellroy before him, David Peace tells us the true and fearsome secret history of our times.

Continuing the narrative begun with Nineteen Seventy-Four and Nineteen Seventy-Seven, this electrifying third installment of David Peace’s Red Riding Quartet demonstrates a skill that goes above and beyond the limits of the genre. While Yorkshire is terrorized by the Ripper, the corrupt police continue to prosper. To give the case some new life, Peter Hunter, a “clean” cop from nearby Manchester, is brought in to offer a fresh perspective. As he goes about setting up a new case under the radar, he suffers the same fate as those who previously attempted to get in the way of the Ripper: his house is burned down, his wife threatened. But he soldiers on. And as he comes face to face with unthinkable evil, Hunter struggles to maintain his reputation, his sanity, and his life.