Nineteen seventy-four

"Haddon was on his feet, pacing. 'You can't just write things and then assume it's the bloody truth because you think it is.' 'I never do that.'"

Alan Moore's 'Voice of the Fire' did a job helping me locate Northampton nearly ten years ago. Not sure David Peace's 'Nineteen Seventy-Four' will help do the same for West Yorkshire but the geography and, to some extent, the landscape(s) seem central. As Ed (Eddie, Edward) Dunford careers between Leeds, Morley, Castleford, Ossett, the M1, Dewsbury, Wakefield (...) with addresses repeated, and unknowable threads drawn between them (interconnectivity, as a concept, reinforced by characters throughout), *something* is being mapped out in all of the shuttling and with Dunford in perpetual motion, seemingly unable to keep still. The weather, too, is ever-present. Rain, grey skies:  Shipley's given me some of that. 

Peace described 'The Damned United' as an occult history of Leeds (the club, the city) and this book's first half described locations seeped in a tone that the word's useful to describe. A creeping and unsettling sense of disquiet (MR James, Arthur Machen?) embedded *in* the landscape (an idea the book's climax seems to be support). Foundations, cement, building, Mandy Wymer's visions of things buried underneath and in-between: underpinning the seemingly superficial motives ("'Over a fucking shopping centre?' 'Yeah, over a fucking shopping centre'") and locating the book somewhere nearer cultural geography than crime novel.

"THIS IS THE NORTH. WE DO WHAT WE WANT!'"