Book Review - 1974 & 1977 by David Peace

"I woke in a rapist sweat from dreams I prayed were not my own."






I missed doing a write after I finished reading 1974 so it’s here with 1977 which I finished last night. Having watched the TV series I knew the plots; 1974 – young girls are being kidnapped and killed - and reading the book I can appreciate all the more the good job it did of capturing the feel of the era, so brown you can almost taste it. The solution is only partly revealed in ’74 and further complicated in ’77 as the Yorkshire Ripper begins his gruesome campaign of death, with the slow realisation that not all the victims are his work. I can see why this was the story dropped for dramatisation as it moves the overall story arc only a little and the Ripper still had more years at large, though I was impressed by the writing, especially chapter 20, which is just one sentence, covering three pages. I'm going to take a little break to finish the current issue of the mighty Word magazine before diving back into deepest darkest Yorkshire.