I started my book review blog in 2009 and I have read so many outstanding books that I wanted to share them again with my followers.  I first posted this review in February 2012.  “He Died with His Eyes Open” is a series and is one of the first noir crime books I read, and though it was published in the 80’s it still resonates with me to this day.

MY REVIEW

All the evil in the world is powerless against intelligence and courage.

A dead body of a man is found in London and the detective protagonist needs to find who did it.  What he finds is an interesting oral history of the victim’s life captured by the victim on tapes.  The tapes reveal the loneliness and destitution that the victim endures and the people that play a part in his life and death.

This book was originally published in the 1980s and the writing is fantastic.  I really enjoyed this noir crime story.  It is stark, gritty, and real and you keep wanting to read more.  The great mastery of this story is that you never learn the name of the detective who is investigating the story and you don’t even realize it because it is so well written.  I can’t wait to read the next in the series.

Thank you to Melville House Publishing and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to review this book.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Derek Raymond was the pseudonym adopted by Robin Cook, a well-born Englishman who spent a great portion of his life in France. Turning his back on Eton and all his birth class implied, he worked for years at whatever menial jobs or scams came to him, writing all the while, learning the secret life of London the way a cab driver must learn its streets. His life’s work culminated in the Factory novels, now seen as clear landmarks in British fiction.  He died in 1994 at the age of 63.

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