Book Review: Nightmare in the Street by Derek Raymond - Page 2

The nameless Detective Sergeant from the Poland Street Factory home of the Department of Unexplained Deaths is reborn in the shape of Kleber - another deeply moral man disgusted by the corruption of the world around him and with plenty of his own demons with which to converse.

Nightmare reads like much of the rest of Raymond's work - it's almost a collection of scenes rather than a novel with a dynamic plot - but you come to Raymond for the writing of those scenes and for his vision which remained intact to the end.

Having chased my Raymond obsession around second-hand shops for years, it's a treat to have something new from the man but I was left disappointed and would recommend this one initially only to completists, towards the end it becomes almost a distilled essence of Raymond, and that's quite tough to stomach, we're round the corner from Kafka and moving in next door to Conrad.

The reappearing Factory series is the best place to start and even I, a confirmed fan, found myself wearying of the unrelenting and unleavened gloom towards the end of Raymond's final work.

Article Author: Colin Ricketts

Colin is half Welsh and half English and lives for most of his life in a third country, The Forest of Dean. Contact him at rickettswrites@gmail.com.
His electronic music, under the guise of The Reverend Spadge Dooley has been played at The Royal …

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