A review by burritapal_1
He Died with His Eyes Open by Derek Raymond

challenging dark informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

" the black novel... describes men and women whom circumstances have pushed too far, people whom existence has bent and deformed. It deals with the question of turning a small, frightened battle with oneself into a much greater struggle - the universal human struggle against the general contract, whose terms are unfillable, and where defeat is certain."

The black novelist's characters forever step from rented rooms in wretched tenements "into the vile psychic weather outside their front doors where everything and everyone has been flattened by a pityless rain that falls from the souls of the people out there." 

Derrick Raymond, Author

I like this book, and I feel a strong connection to the unnamed narrator, the sergeant of the Department of Unexplained Deaths.

He was called into a case where a middle-aged man is found discarded in some bushes in London, and he's literally beaten to death. 

It's a case that seems to be caused by perpetrators that were absolutely enraged with him. 

The policeman that is in charge of crimes wants no part of this case, and he passes it on to the sergeant that is in charge of the cases that are deemed Department of Unexplained Deaths. He's treated badly by this inspector, who looks down on him because he's not an ass kisser and he's not worried about getting promoted; in fact he actively looks down on people who look to be upwardly mobile. My kind of character. 

He is dismissively given the victim's belongings, and mostly, they are boxes of cassette tapes, where the victim has used them as a verbal diary. 

He begins to investigate the case, but his biggest Clues come from listening to this man's tapes. This man was an innocent soul, and he saw through all the bullshit of the humans around him, and tried to communicate his findings to people around him, i.e people in pubs. He was a heavy drinker, and he was in love with a woman who was a sex worker and who had a very cold heart.

One of the people that he interviews to look for Clues is the victim's brother and sister-in-law. The woman character, his sister-in-law, is a horrible human:

" 'How did you know your brother-in-law's wife was a tart, by the way?' I said. 'just by looking at her?'

'well, it rather goes back,' said Grampian, clearing his throat, 'to before.'

'Come on,' I said. 

'well, I met Margo in a club,' said Grampian.

Mrs staniland exploded: 'she was a whore, just a whore! She worked in nightclubs!'

Grampian turned a nasty color, red and purple. The colors looked all right in a Tweed suit but were alarming on a face.

'He's just a poor old goat,' said Mrs staniland hoarseley, turning away. 

'now, now, Betty old girl!' 

She didn't say anything, but put her wrist over her mouth, and started screaming at him from behind it. Grampian darted me hopeless glances, as much as to say: we're both old men, old boy! 

I took no notice. I Leaned against the table covered with bric-a-brac and left him to settle her down if he could. He managed to get her up onto a sofa, dashed out to the kitchen and came back with a damp cloth which he smacked onto her face. She screamed even louder, snatched the towel away and threw it on the floor. Grampian picked it up again and put it back on her face, leaning on her this time to stop her getting up. The table I had settled my bottom against creaked loudly. He heard that all right. 'not that table, if you please!' he shouted politely above the din. 'it's quite valuable!' "

😆 

Before this happened, at first observance, the character lets us know what he thinks of her:

"now I could take Mrs Staniland in. She was not attractive. She took no care of her skin, which resented it in the form of wrinkles. Also she had no bottom, and was flat all over like a playing card. Her gravy-colored Tweed suit did nothing for her, and she did nothing for it back. She had a nice String of Pearls on, but they only emphasized the fact that she had no bust. Now that she had got over the shock of the word 'police,' she spoke in a harsh, upper-class voice, some of it copied. Once she tried smiling, but it didn't get very far."

One of the suspects is a Horrible character, and the narrator breaks into his room to try to get more of a line on him, as he seems high on the list of possible perpetrators. The description of his bedroom is really strange:

"the smell came from the floor. Each space contained a child's chamber pot. Today was Tuesday, so Monday's had excreta in it, and I wondered what the room would smell like when Saturday came, since Sunday's task was evidently to empty the pot and scour everything clean. There was a table at the foot of the cot, placed on a spot precisely co-distant from it and the farther wall. There was a hard wooden chair in front of the table. On the latrer were various things. There was a list, made out in laborious block capitals; it was divided down the middle by a line. The left half of the list was headed 'What Mother Likes' and began: Mother Likes a Boy to be Clean. Mother Likes a Boy to be Regular. It was a long list. There seemed to be no end to the number of things Mother liked. 

The other side of the list, headed 'What Mother Does NOT Like,' was equally long, however. Part of it ran: Mother Does NOT Like Dirt. Mother Does NOT Like Dirty Little Girls. The Only Girls Mother Will Permit are Girls that Punish Dirty Little Boys Who WHO WON'TOPEN THEIR BOWELS. 

There was more of it but, but I had seen as much as I needed. As I looked at that spotless little table, the desire to vomit rising in me as I held my nose, I had an image of Harvey, the big extrovert bully down at the Agincourt, drinking with his mates - and then the other Harvey lying here in his cot, dutifully, insanely lying in the smell of his excrement while his mother listened through the thin wall of her room adjoining and stood over him twice a day while he did his business."

🤢

The narrator solves the crime, but his listening to the tapes left behind by the victim changes him: 

" it was dark over Acacia Circus. I watched the sway of the treetops, leaves curled in unsatisfactory sleep, prevented from their natural Rest by the harshness of the neon strips, and tilting in a poisoned and erratic breeze. Far off, across the fake countryside, I heard the Mumble of City traffic that never ended and the scream of a police siren. I opened the window and sat on the sill for a time, facing into my plain little room that had never cheered anyone up. I thought seriously about the brand-new tabulated phone that seldom rang and the mass-produced door that never opened. I could see part of the fridge out there and the purpose-built kitchenette -- it was full of the Flesh of things that had been bred to die: processed, force-fed chicken and machined veg, Curry Beef dinner for one, Cod slicelets from a factory number three for two. The room was so quiet now, without Staniland's voice in it. But I felt he had given me my instructions forever.

I sat and thought about staniland while I waited patiently for the right hour. He had made me care about what I was in a way that I didn't know I could. He had framed the question that finally mattered in the two lines he had quoted on a cassette. I found them and played them just once more: 

'What shall we be, 

When we aren't what we are?' "