tends to go for stylistic bravura over comprehensibility. I have given up on GB84 twice despite being very interested in the setting, events and time period. I can see it's all very dark, intense, atmospheric and all that...just don't know what's going on half the bloody time.

He seems to have taken the comments about being a British Ellroy to heart.

I enjoyed The Damned United because there was more focus on narrative and character and less clever-dickery.

It was incredibly frustrating to read and, as a result, I probably won't bother with the second book. It's also put me off reading The Damned United

dispite the repetition, I found it really interesting. The lives of those after the bombs had dropped and the mindset of a country humbled and destroyed by the a bomb was fascinating. I think he's a writer who showboats quite a bit, but the work the reader puts in is well rewarded. I'll get the second one once it's remaindered in about three weeks time.

I have read two David Peace books, the ratio of pleasure to frustration was extremly low. His books are a hard read, however you classify it. I would further guess the bulk of his readers are men. You dealing with a person who ploughed through Anthony Beavors History of the Spanish Civil War, so I know cussedness in reading.

Hard can be good or just a slog, my prefernce with Peace is the second.

I read the Red Riding quartet earlier this year. The most hard boiled, and challenging crime fiction series I've read in years. The TV series, though entertaining enough, didn't come close to capturing the social texture and darkness of the various stories.

He is a terrier so can do no wrong in my eyes.

'Putting on your trance trousers' is not, in itself, evidence of good authorship?

I noticed that the blurb for Occupied City described it as the second part of the 'acclaimed trilogy'. How can it be an acclaimed trilogy when the second instalment has just been released and no one has any idea what the third one will be like?

all finished, enjoyed.

didn't understand the end of any of them, but understanding's not really the thing, is it?

funny thing is though, i feel no real need to read the next ones in the series.

i find his stuff pretty samey, really.

he's good, but i don't think he's as good as everyone says, or as good as he thinks he is.

i'll give the clough one a go, though ...

my dad loved it.