From Publishers Weekly
Welsh author Lewis holds nothing back in this unflinching noir, his second novel to feature PI Robin Llywelyn to be made available in the U.S. (after 2008's
Swansea Terminal). A former debt collector who once had hopes of joining the police, Llywelyn now spends his days drinking and lurching from one moment to the next. In debt to a loan shark, Llywelyn hopes for a significant payday from a new client, Mrs. Dixon, who suspects her husband of marital infidelity. Mrs. Dixon's demand that the evidence of same be captured on videotape dramatically increases his expenses. In keeping with his preference to deal with immediate problems without weighing future consequences, Llywelyn goes further into debt by borrowing thousands of pounds from a shylock. While the plot line is serviceable, the book's power lies in Lewis's evocative prose coupled with the warts-and-all portrayal of Llywelyn, who knows that he's on a self-destructive path, but is unable to turn aside.
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So you think you’re a noir connoisseur, perfectly comfortable with the idea that life starts out bad and gets worse. Well, here’s the acid test. Robin Llewellyn is a private eye in Bristol, England, but he has little time for sleuthing, what with the round-the-clock boozing and manic gambling. We pick up his story just when he seems on the verge of a big score: a woman has hired him to entrap her husband with a hooker and collect the blackmail. Easy money, except Llewellyn can’t stay sober long enough to arrange the sting and avoid the crooked cops and lowlife loan sharks eager to claim pounds of his flesh. There is a macabre I Love Lucy element to this three-day bender: we see the train wreck coming, just as we do when Lucy concocts yet another doomed scheme, but we can’t take our eyes away from the screen (or page), uncomfortable as it is. Lewis gets the voice so spot-on, it’s almost too much. With little of the humor one finds in, say, Charlie Williams’ Deadfolk (2004), there’s nothing left except noir without artifice, distilled to its bitter essence. Care for a sip? --Bill Ott
