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Bezig met laden... The Last Llanelli Train (2005)door Robert Lewis
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 Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek.   ) CarolKub | Sep 30, 2014 |  Read from September 27 to 28, 2013 Withdrawn from Peterborough City Council my isbn: 978 1 84632 906 7 large print hardback Opening: The White Hart was over the other side of Victoria Park, in Bedminster. Mr Lou-Ellen smokes B&H and is a private dick prone to hangovers and losing on the gee-gees. I was still waiting for some semblance of a story to appear at the 100 page mark. NEXT! Crossposted aNobii, BookLikes, LibraryThing 1 like (  ) mimal | Sep 28, 2013 | Lewis has created a character (Robin Llewelyn) very much on the edge – all the Noir tropes are there, alcoholic PI, femme fatale, taking what seems to be a simple case but turns out to be much larger and more complicated than first thought etc. Everything though is given a much grittier more realistic slant – Llewelyn is a proper alcoholic in a very self destructive way which almost ruins everything he attempts to do. The femme fatale is a prostitute working in a massage parlour and the plot? It’s a request from a Mrs Dixon to entrap her husband in an infidelity with video evidence. Llewelyn being desperate for money accepts the job without asking too many questions and that’s where his real problems start. The book is occasionally uncomfortable reading and Llewelyn lives a life that has not only gone off the rails but is careening out of control which only gets worse as the plot progresses. Lewis is an accomplished writer and the book is the first in a trilogy and I’ve immediately put the other two books on my wishlist. Perhaps there was a bit extra for me in the book as it’s set on the mean streets of Bedminster and Redcliffe in Bristol with several trips to Old Market Street, which in the late 90’s when the book was set was a seedy district of massage parlours and dodgy pubs and where I happened to live at about the time the story was set. Llewelyn visits several pubs I’ve been in, stays for a night at a hotel I’ve been to and the entrapment is set up in a hotel that hosts a comic book convention I go to every year so I was easily able to envisage the locations where the story was set. Overall – A very dark and potentially depressing but brilliantly written noir about drinking and despair (  )1  psutto | Sep 15, 2011 | I picked up an uncorrected bound proof in an Oxfam shop, and had never heard of the author or the book, but the first page and a half made me laugh so decided to go with it. The narrator is a middle aged alcoholic who lives in a dump, spends much of his time in pubs and bookies, and appears set on a course of self destruction. The plot, as far as I understood it, involves blackmail and shady dealings at the local police station. This novel could have been done 'straight', in which case it would have been dark and depressing from start to finish. Instead it has been done with a fantastically sardonic sense of humour which never lets up, despite the increasingly horrendous things that happen to the main character. The voice is perfect too - even the comparisons he makes are in keeping with his own experience (a pub's olde worlde features are described as 'about as genuine as apologies from a bailiff'.) I lost my grip on the plot towards the end, though I understood enough to enjoy this book thoroughly, and to look forward to reading the sequel. (  )1 jayne_charles | Sep 1, 2010 | )1 Welshwoman | Aug 26, 2010 |
 Another new Welsh crime writer; another private eye (albeit operating on the seedy side of Bristol), and another winner. It must be something in the leeks ... Robin Llewellyn is your run of the mill seedy, hard-drinking detective who just about stumbles on to the right side of the law as he makes a precarious living, until the day he is offered a small fortune by a woman to entrap her husband by recruiting a willing prostitute and filming the consequences. At times sordid, sometimes funny, occasionally bleak and sinister, this is a powerful if disenchanted journey, with echoes of Chandler, of course, but also of great mavericks such as James Crumley, Ellroy and Derek Raymond. Wonderfully misanthropic and sad, it's the sort of book that makes you look uncomfortably at the face in the mirror, for fear of recognising aspects of Robin in yourself. Robin Llewellyn is an ageing, alcoholic private eye with an office over a mini-mart in an unfashionable part of Bristol and terrible memories of a friend betrayed. The sort of bloke who sleeps in his office and wears the same shirt for three days. He's no athletic, handsome TV cop, just a man with his own peculiar sense of honour, teetering on the edge of the gutter but still looking for a way to the stars. And then Mrs Dixon turns up. She wants to set her husband up in a blackmail plot. Simple: errant husband plus hooker plus PI with a video camera and microphone equals big payment. No chance. It's all a scam, and as our hero reels from disaster to disaster, he realises he's nothing more than a patsy in a grander scheme. The Last Llanelli Train is a depressing and bitter tale of a frankly disgusting man, but with enough flashes of black humour to make it more than likeable. I hope Llewellyn returns. Onderdeel van de reeks(en)Robin Llewellyn (1)
Shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Writing "It's Bukowski's Pulp gone West Country."--Uncut "Takes the classic elements of noir . . . and pushes the genre to its limits."--Welsh Literature Abroad Meet Robert Llewellyn, the most apathetic, hopeless private eye ever created. He's one step away from the gutter when he gets one last case--and that case smells of money. Mixing purest noir with some jet-black comedy, The Last Llanelli Train offers an unforgettable portrait of a man whose life is falling apart. Robert Lewis is from the Black Mountains in Wales. He now lives in Swansea. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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