The Factory series was published between 1984 and 1993, and there remains no finer writing – crime or otherwise – about the state of Britain. Tragically, it is still the state we’re in.
[David Peace, 2011, cité par John Harvey sur son blog, clic-clic. Avec un hommage à deux de nos personal favourites, Laidlaw et Balzic, pas les plus connus, non, mais voilà. Il doit bien y avoir quelques traces dans les archives.]
Though the other character who was of central importance as a progenitor of Resnick was William McIlvanney’s Laidlaw. And not just to me. Rankin, whose Edinburgh was closer, after all, to Laidlaw’s Glasgow than my Nottingham, has made clear his debt to McIlvanney in the past. “Rebus,” he has said, “was an attempt at an east-coast Laidlaw.” Finally, though, when it comes the naming favourites, the law officers I enjoy reading about more than any others, are three: the persistent and long-suffering police chief Mario Balzic, in a stream of novels by K. C. Constantine; the permanently at-odds duo of Harpur and Isles in the novels of Bill James; and Jamie Harrison’s Sheriff Jules Clement, struggling to overcome a guiltily left-wing youth, gain respect and bring law and order [ plus the occasional well-made meal ] to the small township of Blue Deer, Montana.
Though the other character who was of central importance as a progenitor of Resnick was William McIlvanney’s Laidlaw. And not just to me. Rankin, whose Edinburgh was closer, after all, to Laidlaw’s Glasgow than my Nottingham, has made clear his debt to McIlvanney in the past. “Rebus,” he has said, “was an attempt at an east-coast Laidlaw.” Finally, though, when it comes the naming favourites, the law officers I enjoy reading about more than any others, are three: the persistent and long-suffering police chief Mario Balzic, in a stream of novels by K. C. Constantine; the permanently at-odds duo of Harpur and Isles in the novels of Bill James; and Jamie Harrison’s Sheriff Jules Clement, struggling to overcome a guiltily left-wing youth, gain respect and bring law and order [ plus the occasional well-made meal ] to the small township of Blue Deer, Montana.
