Abstract
David Peace and the late Gordon Burn are two British novelists who have used a mixture of fact and fiction in their works to explore the nature of fame, celebrity and the media representations of individuals caught up in events, including investigations into notorious murders. Both Peace and Burn have analysed the case of Peter Sutcliffe, who was found guilty in 1981 of the brutal murders of thirteen women in the North of England. Peace’s novels filmed as the Red Riding Trilogy are an excoriating portrayal of the failings of misogynist and corrupt police officers, which allowed Sutcliffe to escape arrest. Burn’s somebody’s Husband Somebody’ Son is a detailed factual portrait of the community where Sutcliffe spent his life. Peace’s technique combines reportage, stream of consciousness and changing points of views including the police and the victims to produce an episodic non linear narrative. The result has been termed Yorkshire noir. The overall effect is to render the paranoia and fear these crimes created against a backdrop of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Peace has termed his novels as “fictions of the facts”. This paper will examine the way that Peace uses his account of Sutcliffe’s crimes and the huge police manhunt to catch the killer to explore the society that produced the perpetrator, victims and the police. The police officers represent a form of “hegemonic masculinity” but one that is challenged by the extreme misogyny, brutality, misery and degradation that surround them. This deconstruction of the 1970s male police officer is contrasted with the enormously popular figure of Gene Hunt from the BBC TV series Life on Mars.
Highlights
This article will explore, via the works of Peace and Burn, the literary portrayal of the impacts of investigating violent and sexual crime on the police officers and those around them
The article argues that characters such as the police officers in Peace’s work reflect wider problems in terms of the construction of masculinity
It is harder to see how these views fit into a radical political agenda
Summary
This article will explore, via the works of Peace and Burn, the literary portrayal of the impacts of investigating violent and sexual crime on the police officers and those around them. The article argues that characters such as the police officers in Peace’s work reflect wider problems in terms of the construction of masculinity. They are forced to confront extreme misogyny and violence. They are overwhelmed by the brutality, misery and degradation that surround them. They share many of the attitudes that are at the root of the hideous crimes they must investigate, the attitudes being embedded in the institutions in which they operate. Red Riding [2] represents a dark contrast to this nostalgic vision of 1970s’ policing and masculinity
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