Red Riding 1974

David Peace - named in 2003 as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists - was born and brought up in Yorkshire. He is the author of the The Red Riding Quartet, GB84, which was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Award, The Damned Utd, which was adapted for screen by Peter Morgan and starred Michael Sheen, Red or Dead, which was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize, and Tokyo Year Zero and Occupied City, the first two parts of his acclaimed Tokyo Trilogy. The Red Riding Quartet was adapted for television by Channel 4. He lives in Tokyo.

The slow-burning, word-of-mouth success story of British publishing... These four books recreated the pervasive sense of terror and corruption with a hammering, semi-magical style loosely reminiscent of James Ellroy, but steeped in something far more bleak and English... the evil twin of Life On Mars... Peace may have succeeded in creating an enduring literature for a curiously undocumented area of Britain -- Justin Quirk Guardian Guide Bleakly brilliant Radio Times Compelling Sunday Times He's in a class of his own in terms of ambition. He's trying to write these alternative histories of events we know quite well in a challenging way. The fact that he's dealing with very English subjects from Japan is very interesting -- Alex Clark editor of Granta Magazine A British crime master work. Required reading... Maxim Original, difficult, brilliant Observer Haunting evocations of 70s and 80s Yorkshire - interlinking tales of very fallible coppers, very noir hacks, very human killers -- Euan Ferguson Observer Singular and memorable -- Ian Jack Guardian