HE DIED WITH HIS EYES OPEN
by Derek Raymond
Serpent's Tail, £7.99; 211pp

FIRST, THE WARNING. Sacred Games is 900 pages and although some 130 can be omitted (they’re called insets, and their relevance escapes me) it is the longest piece of crime fiction I have yet recommended and some readers may find its sheer density off-putting.

Nor is it a mystery in familiar format. Its ambitions go well beyond that, in particular in its vivid evocation of the Mumbai (Bombay) underworld, with its social, religious and political intricacies. That said, it remains primarily a story of police detection with literary overtones and a tendency to excessive information.

Sarjat Singh, the unattractive and unhappy hero, is a Sikh inspector in the Mumbai police. He is 40, divorced, mildly corrupt and not averse to violence. His break comes when he receives an anonymous call telling him where to find the most wanted criminal in the city — the gangster godfather and murderer Ganesh Gaitonde. Sarjat lays siege to his hideout, but the fugitive shoots himself.

From then on, the book, in alternate chapters, follows Sarjat’s investigations and Gaitonde’s memoirs, delivered in the first person from the grave. The gangster’s confessions are somewhat jollier than Sarjat’s progress. Sacred Games took seven years to research and write; it is worth investing a few days to read it.

Derek Raymond, who died in 1994, was a pioneer of British noir. He Died with his Eyes Open, originally published in 1984, was the first of five novels in that genre.

He was a one-off. No one has come near to matching his style or overwhelming sense of sadness. Raymond outbleaked even the bleakest American writers. All his characters, including the police, are losers; many on the lowest rungs of criminal endeavour. Yet he invests them with a dignity that is often moving. The main character here is never named; he is a sergeant in the Metropolitan Police’s Department of Unexplained Deaths (the Factory) “by far the most unpopular and shunned branch of the service”, called on to investigate the seediest homicides. The mutilated body is that of a broke, middle-aged drunk.

The only clues are in some of his writings and tape recordings. The narrator follows them up, at first with tired cynicism, then more personal involvement. Raymond’s world is uniformly sinister, his language strangely mannered. He does not strive for accuracy, but achieves an emotional truth all his own.

Times Recommends

• Madonna and her Guy decide it’s over
• Terror police target internet phone calls
• Red squirrels develop immunity to grey plague