In one of those odd cultural clusters that sometimes come along, I went from never having heard of David Peace (that I could remember) to hearing only of David Peace. Or so it seems.

At a friend’s place for dinner the other night, the friend raved about Peace’s Nineteen Seventy-Four, the first book in a series of four known as the Red Riding Quartet. In Nineteen Seventy-Four, a Yorkshire crime correspondent investigates a series of child murders. The books have been compared to James Ellroy, and they sound extra-grim. (The series’ striking covers were designed by the brilliant Gregg Kulick.) Then another friend mentioned that she recently assigned a review of Peace’s new novel, Occupied City. And then I came across Whitney Matheson’s post about a series of films produced by IFC based on the Red Riding quartet, though it’s been truncated into a cinematic trilogy. A trailer for all three movies here.