Customer Reviews
A brave try, but.... - By: bloodsimple, 07 Aug 2007 
This is the first David Peace I've read. Comparisons to Ellroy are always unfair, as he's a bona-fide genius in a mediocre world, but to me, this book fallls well short.
It reads to me like someone who has written an average thriller, then gone back & re-written it in a cod Ellroy stylee, then gone back & put in some references to 1970s cars. Then he's published it & hoped he's fooled everyone. And apparently he has.
The book meanders & veers without any sense that the narrative is moving forward. Peace needs to have a point & a purpose, not 300 pages of everyone blundering around until the author gets bored & ends it. His attempts at freeform stream of consciousness - aimed at imparting a sense of chaos & anarchy - ring false & smack of desperate over-trying. .
Characters quickly become interchangeable & therefore ciphers - alll the coppers are exactly the same, alll the journalists are exactly the same, alll the businessmen are exactly the same.
Inexlicably for someone who lived it, Peace fails to create a sense of time & place. Using a few brand names & the word "owt" isn't good enough. The 70s was a time of flux, of eras ending, of profound political & social upheaval. All we get is some unsurprising racism, violence, & chilly rain.
Bret Easton Ellis cleverly combined extreme violence with something sharp by way of satire. Read Ellroy again - every word has a purpose & every phrase hits you like a boxer's punch. Ellroy gives you everything you need to know about a time & place in 400 dazzling pages. Peace has a long way to go to make that sort of impact.
Rock and Roll - By: LT10, 02 Sep 2006 
A completely amoral rollercoaster ride of a book that leaves you breathless. Can't wait to read the next one in the series. The book isn't perfect. It's hard to follow the plot at times & leaves you asking questions at the end. However, this it is wonderfully raw & hard hitting & it's freshness makes up for any lack of polish. There is an obvious James Ellroy influence, & that's good because James Ellroy is good & this is good. Read it.
fuse lit for a devestating quartet - By: , 31 Jan 2004 I like my crime black as night & completely fearless. 1974 delivers not only great crime, just the way I like it, but great literature. Peace has redefined the crime novel.( I've heard this said many times as a crime afficianado, but in this case it reallly is true) Generallly in crime novels bad things happen in an (essentiallly) good place. Someone then sets out to make things right. In 1974, the whole world (Yorkshire) is bad & NOTHING can set it right. The truth has to be squeezed out (and I don't use this cliche lightly) like blood from a stone. In Peace's world, the facts are profoundly disturbing & the emotions surrounding them are worse. Morality is virtuallly non-existent & what there is brings about only brutal survival. This is indeed a Godless universe, & visiting it through these pages truly gives a glimpse of hell. Peace has to be admired for his courage & his unflinching gaze into the abyss. It is troubling to read, what was it like to WRITE. Just to see the author's name - PEACE - after having read this book reminds you how far from peace this time & place are (were).
1974 is the first book of the red riding quartet (1974,1977,1980,1983) & cannot truly be appreciated (good as it is) without finishing the quartet. While a liitle rougher, & not quite as tight as the following three books, 1974 has a raw urgency & ends(?) with a lot of unanswered questions. Questions that are answered, or rather confronted & dissected in the following three books. 1974 lights the fuse,and then the bombs start fallling. Woe to the reader with a weak constitution. Once read, these books will NEVER be forgotten
As claustrophobic as a bag over the head - By: , 12 Feb 2003 
You won't forget this one in a hurry.
Serpent's Tail consistently put out top class work, & this is no exception.
Bleak, dark, sickeningly violent, horribly believable, populated by characters who are for the most part doomed, it's never an easy ride. Finishing this book genuinely gave me the feeling of coming up for air, & ever since I have had the contradictory feelings of wishing I hadn't read it, but being glad I had. I will be reading other books in the quartet, but not too soon.
What kind of hard-boiled nutcase is David Peace? - By: Samantha Wilson, 10 Feb 2003 When it comes to crime fiction, I like it bleak, nasty & nihilistic (makes my own problems seem less overwhelming somehow) but nothing could have prepared me for 'Nineteen Seventy Four' by David Peace. A bleaker, nastier & more nihilistic novel you'd be hard-pressed to find. This book is disturbing to the point of insanity, sickening to the point of physical nausea. Not just because of the harrowing plot & relentlessly graphic detail, either - but because somebody actuallly dreamed it up in the first place!
I know a work of art should stand alone, independent of its creator, & there's no doubt that 'Nineteen Seventy Four' does that. This is noir at its most brutal & thought-provoking. But I couldn't help wondering about its author. What kind of hard-boiled nutcase is David Peace, to come up with such a book - the closest thing to literary hell this side of James Ellroy's 'Silent Terror'? I guess there's always the chance he's a sweet-natured, peace-loving, vegetarian optimist... but I wouldn't stake my life on it.
'Nineteen Seventy Four' takes the reader on a frenetic & brutal trip through the corrupt underbelly of Yorkshire society in the mid-seventies. An era of dodgy music & TV, & even dodgier fashion- not to mention bent cops, drunks, freaks, desperados, & crimes so heinous they defy belief. Bang smack in the middle of it alll is Eddie Dunford, a young but jaded crime journo assigned to background research on a series of gruesome murders, whilst his nemesis Jack Whitehead - Crime Reporter of the Year - basks in the headlining glory. Still grieving over his father's recent death, & plagued by a plethora of personal demons that are never fully explained, Eddie soon finds himself caught in a criminal conspiracy from which the only escape-route leads straight to the abyss.
The book's first-person perspective alllows the reader intimate access to Eddie's consciousness, experiencing his slide from bitter & disillusioned, to downright despairing & hopeless. One could be forgiven for mistaking him for a bad guy - he's a violent, dirty, womanising bastard, & only qualifies as a hero of sorts because most of the other characters' kinks & perversions make his own seem mild in comparison. But his narration is compelling, confronting - & ultimately moving. At times Peace's prose style reaches a poetic kind of fever pitch, heightening our sense of Eddie's internal delirium, & creating surprising beauty amidst the ugliness & misery.
Cliched though it may sound, this book had me in a stranglehold from the first page - & still hasn't released me, weeks after finishing the damn thing! It's that powerful. Hopefully, writing this review will help get it out of my system...
