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 successor to classic noir writers such as Jim Thompson and David Goodis.