Nineteen Seventy-Seven

David Peace proves himself to be a modern master of the crime novel with the exhilarating, explosive second entry in his acclaimed Red Riding Quartet. It's summer in Yorkshire and as the rest of the population anxiously awaits Queen Elizabeth's Jubilee, Detective Bob Fraser and Jack Whitehead, a reporter at the Post, have other things on their minds-mainly the fact that someone is murdering prostitutes. The killer is quickly dubbed “the Yorkshire Ripper” and each man, on his own, works tirelessly to catch him. But their investigations turn grisly as they each engage in affairs with the prostitutes they are supposedly protecting. As the summer moves relentlessly towards the bonfires of Jubilee Night, the killings accelerate and it seems as if Fraser and Whitehead are the only men who suspect or care that there may be more than one killer at large.