This, the third novel in the Factory Series, sees Raymond''s nameless detective leave London for a remote village called Thornhill, where he''s meant to be looking into the disappearance of a local doctor''s wife. How The Dead Live is a haunting, fantastical novel, with a hellish country house at its centre; a mystery with little interest in the mystery, a police procedural with almost no procedure. Instead, and as ever with Raymond, it''s a brilliantly unsettling investigation into love and damnation. This is life seen from the very bottom of the bottle - a fitting succesor to classic noir writers such as Jim Thompson and David Goodis.