He Died With His Eyes Open by Derek Raymond
Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 11:16PM 
First published in the UK in 1984; published by Melville House on October 4, 2011
A nameless police sergeant is assigned to investigate the violent death of Charlie Staniland, a 51 year old nobody. The sergeant is a dedicated cop stuck in Unexplained Deaths, a division that specializes in crimes committed against London's downtrodden and, for that reason, lacks the respect given to the divisions that specialize is more newsworthy crimes. The sergeant's blunt nature likely assures he will never be promoted; in the belief that "murder outranks rank," he regularly mouths off to uncooperative superiors who take no interest in the unglamorous cases he pursues.
As the sergeant listens to tapes Staniland recorded before his death, he discovers that Staniland became involved (rather impotently) with a woman named Barbara Spark after his wife left him. The sergeant talks with Staniland's brother, his ex-wife, his stepson, his former employers and co-workers, a bank manager, a bartender, Barbara's ex-husband -- all colorful, sharply rendered characters -- as he reconstructs the dead man's life. When he finally meets Barbara, his investigative approach is unconventional -- one might even say unprofessional. The plot eventually takes a turn toward the bizarre as we learn more about one of the characters than we might comfortably want to know.
This is a dark novel. Some of the characters want to be dead; some might as well be. Life has beaten them down. Crime is only a secondary source of darkness in the novel; life itself is the real culprit, life and its treachery, its false hopes, its broken promises. The sergeant is far from being a source of light in the surrounding gloom, although he has a degree of compassion that the other characters tend to lack. He is an uncommonly philosophical law enforcement officer, one who wonders "what the value of truth really was, if getting at it entailed so many lies." Although he doesn't stand out in the world of noir crime fighters, he's a solid entry.
Derek Raymond's prose style is efficient, biting, bleak, as hard and chilly as granite -- in other words, well-suited to the story he tells. Originally published in 1984, this is the first of Raymond's "Factory" novels and the first I've read. It won't be the last.
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