Derek Raymond

It's been almost five years since I spent an afternoon along Charing Cross Road and later Piccadilly, in and out of several bookshops, which is still a continued habit on nearly each visit to London. I didn't realize that one of the conversations I'd have with a particular bookseller that day would be so transformative. We were discussing neo-noir authors and books, among them those from Jean-Claude Izzo, and others in translation that were recently being republished by Europa Editions. I asked for specific recommendations for something dark, hard boiled, and unquestionably British. I was looking for something outside contemporary fare and separate in tone and theme from the quintessential cozy English mysteries, which I do happen to love. I was in search of something different and fitting. The first name I was given was Derek Raymond. Among the books I left with that day were the initial two Factory novels. I haven't been the same since. 

I recently found myself going back through some older biographical information about other lost London writers such as Alexander Baron and Emanuel Litvinoff, two former Jewish East London authors who are still the subjects of somewhat of an obsessive goose hunt of mine. I came across Iain Sinclair's co-produced short documentary from 1992 called The Cardinal and the Corpse. It features rare, and perhaps the first and last on-screen interviews, with Alexander Baron and Derek Raymond, among others from the underbelly of literary London. My next mission is to somehow find a copy or stream of On ne meurt que deux fois, the 1985 French neo-noir film that is a remake of Raymond's legendary first Factory novel He Died with His Eyes Open.