Dr. John A. King reviews Derek Raymond's noir novel, where an unnamed detective's lack of identity mirrors real workplace dynamics. Raymond strips away description to build mood through specific details, a technique King is using in his own revenge novel about military sexual trauma, Till It's Done.
Hey, how you going? Noir book review, He Died with His Eyes Open by Derek Raymond. Let me read you a bit. Barbara was hatched in fury like a wasp, and she'll die in fury. Her promiscuity is aggression. She uses sex to obliterate a man. This is her revenge on existence. It's fantastic noir. What I love about this particular book Was that it's all written from the first person, as much noir is, but you never actually find the name of the person, the detective that it's focusing, because it is a police procedural. You don't ever hear about him. You don't— never— no one never references his name. So through the entire novel, you don't have that. And if you think about it, often we don't introduce ourselves in life unless we're introducing ourselves to somebody else. But if it's in a group of people who know you, like a work situation, You're just that person speaking, seeing, observing. This is what this does. I found it really interesting. I've got a novel coming out on military sexual trauma. It's a revenge novel called Till It's Done. And one of the characters is all written in the first person. The rest of the book is in third person. So it was really interesting research to read this book and see how it was done. So independent press, not a well-known author. And very much worth a read if you like noir. So noir is a style that is stripped back, often emotionally, but also in terms of description. The description is around very specific things that set a mood. So overall, I find it a great read, a different read, and a challenge, right? Because there's not a lot of neo-noir, as I love to write about today. So there you go. Give it a go. Worth it. And please follow me on Substack. I do reviews every Thursday and a bunch of other stuff around mental health and reading and writing. Cheers.
