Product Description

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 concludes an extraordinary body of work confirming Peace as the most innovative and remarkable new British crime writer to have emerged for years.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5333 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Review
"'Breathless, extravagant, ultra-violent' Independent on Sunday 'British crime fiction's most exciting new voice in decades' GQ 'Brilliant' The Times 'The pace is relentless, the style staccato-plus and the morality bleak and forlorn... Peace's voice is powerful and unique' Guardian 'Quite simply, this is the future of British crime fiction' Time Out 'A triumph of sustained narrative energy that reinvigorates the British crime novel' Daily Telegraph"

Buzz
‘Nineteen Eighty Three is a fitting conclusion for one of the finest series in contemporary Biritsh crime writing’

Daily Telegraph
... a triumph of sustained narrative energy that reinvigorates the British crime novel with stylistic élan and a universal relevance’

Customer Reviews

Heart of darkness
FOr anyone with even a passing interest in crime fiction, David Peace's Red Riding quartet is essential reading. Set in Yorkshire throughout the seventies and eighties, Peace balances the case of the Yorkshire Ripper with the theme of police corruption. Not cheerful stuff then, but fantastically crafted and well observed.

All four books are violent and disturbing outings. Peace's characters are cruel, selfish and self-loathing creations that stay with the reader long after the book is finished.

1983 is the final part of the quartet and should only be read after completing the first three. This isn't the type of series you can miss bits out of.

As usual the plot is tense and draws the reader in. The kind of book that takes one long sitting, it is very hard to put down. Indeed, due to the breakneck pace of Peace's startling prose, it is often impossible to withdraw from the narrative at all.

This novel is the strongest of the four, utillising a tight yet intricate structure, thrusting the reader back and forth across the decades revealing startling truths about the characters, many of whom are familiar from earlier in the series.

Indeed, many of the images used here are also familiar from earlier giving the reader a sense of a claustrophobic communal nightmare.

If you've never read any David Peace, I suggest starting with the superb 1974 and working your way through. If you've already read the first three books, you need to read this. But then you know that already.

A stunning conclusion to the Quartet
When a figure dominates a genre as James Ellroy does modern crime fiction, then it is inevitable that blurb writers suggest unnatural comparisons between authors and the master. Many have suffered. Ian Rankin is Scotland's Ellroy; and David Peace is Yorkshire's. While some writers suffer from the comparison, Peace does not.

His series of novels set in and around Leeds at the time of the Yorkshire Ripper murders is in my view the finest modern British series in crime fiction. Dark, desperate, highly stylised, moving, they engage with modern Britain - drawing on a number of topical themes: abuse; corruption; conspiracy.

This the final novel in the quartet revisits many of the threads initiated in 1974, but are presented in such a way that knowledge of the previous novels is not necessary.

The three principals here: BJ, a rent boy, Piggot, a corrupt solicitor, and Jobson, a corrupt policeman, are set in three different interlinking narratives. In demonstrating how his style has developed since his earlier work, here various devices are used effortlessly. Piggot's chapters are written in the second person, BJ refers to himself continually in the third person. The device differentiates the narrative threads, but also serves to demonstrate the distancing each character has from their story.

The characters are all too human, complex people with complex motivations. Violence is presented explictly, the consequences of actions explored (throughout the whole of the twenty five year span covered by the novel).

The subject matter - violent child murders and abuse - may be too much for some. The writing style may be too much for others. BUt make no mistake, David Peace is the most exciting and most important thing that has happened to crime fiction in the UK in a very long time.

A fitting conclusion to the darkly beutiful series
I still find it difficult to understand how some reviewers continue to moan about how they find the use of swear words and its darkness make it a terrible terrible book despite having must have made it through the four books or fail to understand the term Quartet.
But anyway enough meanderings and onto the review!

The final book is the best yet, with a great use of third, first and self narrative all mixed together to keep the use of three characters nice and tidy.
The twist are hidden well and will leave you chilled by the end with a feeling of sadness for the characters involved.

Also a great use of narrative form to trick us for a few pages at the end - really great.

Throughout the series Peace has improved his writing greatly and has truly perfected his form by the final book, the mix of surreal imagery which can only be described as a twisted industrial poetry keeps you pinned to the page during even some of the slower parts (of which there are not many)

I wish I hadn't seen the trilogy to be honest now as there were so many revelations which even though I knew was coming left me feeling awkward and sadistic myself (to all intensive purposes this is a good thing) and I wonder how I would feel if i was learning them first hand.
However having seen the trilogy I was waiting for my happy ending where everything is resolved and put in its place.

This book however is not that story. It'll leave you feeling darker than any of the past series, wanting more but also feeling strangely fulfilled.
Slowly the pieces form and the evils are revealed and defeated (in a way which is superior to the TV programme) yet the stench of corruption remains stuck - but before we leave the North we see a conscious forming, the corrupt and evil are punished - yet true to Red Riding not everything is concluded.


Darkest one yet - this is not a bad thing.