The praise for David Peace’ first novel is completely justified. It is brilliantly written and takes you in immediately. From the first page on you're alongside Edward Dunford, North of England Crime Correspondent for the Evening Post, on his journey through a dark sea of corruption and murder.
It's hard to put aside once you've started with reading.
Simply a must read!

For someone who's not used to read in English, it might be a bit difficult for starters. For anyone else I completely recommend to read it in English rather than in German, because I've peeked into the German edition, and the tone comes not even close to the original!

Horrible writing. This book stunk.

It was alright but it is a lot like the ellroy LA books. The protagonist is less likeable than any of Ellroy’s but the trade off is he spends most of the time comically stepping on rakes like sideshow bob

Very much matches the time period in which it is set. Yet, for some reason, I did enjoy it. Need to figure out why.

An excellent, if depressing, read.
Yorkshire, 1974. A young girl goes missing, and North of England Crime Correspondent Edward Dunford follows the case with growing interest. Soon he discovers that the girl's disappearance might be linked to the abduction of two other girls, but that, as it turns out, is only the tip of the iceberg.
It's really horribly depressing, but oh so very good. I can't honestly judge how well David Peace did with capturing the "spirit" of the time and place, but it sure feels very real. I love how driven the language is, and I love the mood it creates. And although I'm not sure it's the best way to praise a book I have to say that it contains a torture scene that almost made me throw up. It really got under my skin - not just that scene, but the whole book - and that is something not every book manages to do. I'm definitely going to read the other books of the quartet as well.

Yorkshire, Weihnachten 1974. Ein junges Mädchen ist spurlos verschwunden. Edward Dunford, Gerichts-und Polizeireporter, stößt bei seinen Recherchen auf eine mögliche Verbindung zu zwei weiteren Entführungsfällen, kommt dabei aber den Reichen und Mächtigen von Leeds gefährlich nahe. Wie gefährlich, stellt sich heraus als einer seiner Kollegen bei einem "Unfall" ums Leben kommt...
Ein düsterer Krimi, schockierend und atemberaubend gut.

I can see why a lot of people hated this - it's relentlessly misanthropic and cynical, wildly implausible at times, and there's barely a likable character - but hell, it kept me entertained throughout and there was an impressive urgency to the prose, so four stars.

DNF. Too nasty for me. Thought I'd try out a little more crime fiction but I need it much pulpier and entertaining than this. My brain doesn't know where to put the miserable details.

I read a lot of noir fiction and this series is the darkest I've ever read. What makes it a necessary addition to the must read stack is the unusual writing style. After I got into it I realized it was similar to British noir graphic novels such as the Sebastion series. It's like a mashup of normal noir genre and comic books. Very cool.

Ugh. I recently abandoned two belletristic contemporary novels mid-way through because they failed to be entertaining or educational, so I thought I'd try some genre fiction. This one starts with a jolt and impressive, gripping style. Oblique storytelling and character development. Staccato sentences with no verbs. A strong sense of place.

I was hooked... and then it slowly goes nowhere interesting. There are dozens of secondary and tertiary characters with similar names who are impossible to tell apart. The style becomes an impediment to telling the story, and the unraveling of the mystery is handled so clumsily that by two-thirds of the way through, nothing is at stake and there is no reason to care. It becomes a confusing, boring read. It's also relentlessly grim and violent, which (without a higher purpose or more artful construction) becomes merely off-putting and cheap. It's also extremely misogynist.

I hear this series gets better, but I am turned off and will likely stop with this one.

Mark Fisher recommended this series, I'll have to go back and re-read his commentary on it.