Derek Raymond/Robin Cook

I knew him quite well, and wrote his obituary for The Times years before I wrote any other obituaries anywhere else. Today I read A State of Denmark for the first time in nearly 20 years. It scared the living daylights out of me, not just because it is a brilliant examination of the effect of dictatorship on the individual, but because so many little bits of it (CCTV cameras, ID cards, the joining up of different government departments to provide a full picture of you, the weaselly collaboration of different European states, ignoring the laws and constitutions of each) seem so horrifyingly plausible. It is a brilliant book.

Serpent's Tail publish it: ISBN 978-1-85242-947-8