Derek Raymond’s South Circular
Robin Cook’s gift for chronicling London lowlife, like a well-thumbed A-Z, is an assured legacy (forget the straitjacket of genre, Cook is up there with Hamilton and Gissing) but this gave me pause for thought, why South London? All authors need a hinterland and while Cook was resolutely Sohemian in his drinking habits (the eponymous Factory being located on Poland Street, now the edge of the gay district where bear pubs meet Oxford Street’s visa scam language schools), South London effectively becomes the dumping ground for bodies or the bolthole of murderers in the Factory novels.
By Andrew Stevens.
3:AM Top 5: Darran Anderson
Darran Anderson is an Irish writer from Derry currently residing in Edinburgh, Scotland. He co-edits poetry with 3:AM as well as Dogmatika and Laika Poetry Review. He is from a long line of drinkers, slanderers, deserters and horse thieves. Following several poetry collections, he is currently finishing a novel entitled The Ship is Sinking. His […]