The last time David Peace wrote a novel about football he got his publishers sued for libel, which may help explain why his new one avoids invention wherever it
can squeeze interest out of such stony matters of record as team sheets and attendance figures.
Red or Dead follows the legendary manager Bill Shankly from his arrival at
Liverpool — second-division stragglers in 1959 — to his death in 1981, seven years after retirement, having built a league-winning team that went on to rule Europe. Seldom does a novel, dedicated at such length to a single life, venture so scarcely into the mind of its subject; the gamble is that Peace’s biblically iterative method is strong enough to sustain but not overwhelm you.
All the novel’s effects depend on repetition. Here Peace uses a mere number to evoke match-night majesty:
On Thursday 14 April, 1966, Liverpool Football Club travelled to Parkhead, Glasgow.
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