I Was Dora Suarez (Factory 4)

One of the most shocking crime novels of all time

In what may be Derek Raymond’s most talked-about novel—indeed, in what may be one of the most talked about crime novels ever—the reader is immediately plunged into the horrific mind of one of the most brutally damaged and murderous killers the unnamed Sergeant has ever faced.

But why the gentle Dora Suarez was murdered at all becomes the Sergeant’s obsession. As it turns out, she was already dying of AIDS. So why kill her?

As the shocking details pile up, the fourth book in the series becomes a riveting and moving study of vile human exploitation and institutional corruption, and the valiant effort to persist against it.

Derek Raymond was the pseudonym of British writer Robert Cook, who was born in London in 1931. The son of a textile magnate, he dropped out of Eton and rejected a life of privilege for a life of adventure. He traveled the world, living in Paris at the Beat Hotel and on New York’s seedy Lower East Side, smuggled artworks into Amsterdam, and spent time in a Spanish prison for publicly making fun of Franco. Finally, he landed back in London, working in the lower echelons of the Kray Brothers’ crime syndicate laundering money, organizing illegal gambling, and setting up insurance scams. He eventually took to writing—first as a pornographer, but then as an increasingly serious novelist, writing about the desperate characters and experiences he’d known in London’s underground. His work culminated in the Factory novels, landmarks that have led many to consider  him the founding father of British noir. He died in London in 1993.