I Was Dora Suarez
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| Author | Derek Raymond |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Christopher King |
| Country | UK |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Detective novel |
| Publisher | Melville House Publishing |
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Publication date
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1990 |
| Pages | 202 |
| ISBN | |
I was Dora Suarez (published in 1990) is a detective novel by Derek Raymond. It is the fourth book in the Factory series (with He Died with His Eyes Open, The Devil's Home on Leave, and How the Dead Live).
As the fourth novel in the Factory series opens, young prostitute Dora Suarez is axed into pieces. The killer then smashes the head of her neighbour, an 86-year-old widow. On the same night, a mile away in the West End, a shotgun blows the top off the head of Felix Roatta, part-owner of the seedy Parallel Club. As the detective obsesses over the young woman whose murder he investigates, he discovers that her death is even more bizarre than he had suspected: the murderer ate bits of flesh from Suarez’s corpse and ejaculated against her thigh. Autopsy results accrue the revulsion as they compound the puzzle: Suarez was dying of AIDS, but the pathologist is unable to determine how she had contracted HIV. Then a photo, supplied by a former Parallel hostess, links Suarez to Roatta, and inquiries at the nightclub reveal her vile and inhuman exploitation.
Cook’s notoriety crested following the 1990 publication of what many consider his best — and most repulsive — work: the tortured, redemptive tale of a masochistic serial killer, I Was Dora Suarez. To Cook’s delight, the ensuing novel caused Dan Franklin, the publisher of its three predecessors, to vomit over his desk. As a result of this reader response, Secker & Warburg told the author to take his nauseating wares elsewhere. Scribner took over the fourth novel in the factory series. Writing for The New York Times, Marilyn Stasio proclaimed: “Everything about I Was Dora Suarez […] shrieks of the joy and pain of going too far.” Filmmaker Chris Petit described it in The Times as “a book full of coagulating disgust and compassion for the world’s contamination, disease and mutilation, all dwelt on with a feverish, metaphysical intensity that recalls Donne and the Jacobeans more than any of Raymond’s contemporaries.”
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