The Last Llanelli Train - Softcover

Lewis, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1852428902 ISBN 13: 9781852428907

Verlag: Serpent's Tail, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

Robert Lewis' debut novel is an instant noir classic - one part Eddie Shoestring to nine parts David Goodis. Robin Llewellyn is a private eye. More or less. Part time really, while he gets on with the full-time job of drinking himself to death on the mean streets of Bristol. He's one step away from the gutter when he gets one last case. A case that smells of money. A woman wants to set her husband up for blackmail. All Robin has to do is find a hooker to do the job, and collect his money. Then maybe he'll be back in the game. Or at least have enough to pay for another drink and another bet. If only life were that simple. The Last Llanelli Train drags the private eye novel into the 21st century and some very dark places indeed. Mixing purest noir with some very, very black comedy, The Last Llanelli Train offers an unforgettable portrait of a man at the very end of his tether.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Robert Lewis was born in the Black Mountains, in the Brecon Beacons, which is by all accounts a beautiful part of the world. He spent his twenties getting sacked, living in bedsits, drinking in the dodgier pubs of various cities, and caring about the wrong things. Most of this is still going on.
He still thinks literature can save him, and he's almost thirty now. He hasn't seen it save anyone else.

His first novel, The Last Llanelli Train was shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Writing, along with Zadie Smith and Chrisother Brookmyre.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

The Last Llanelli Train by Robert Lewis

Leadtext: Chapter 1: Ennui
The White Hart was over on the other side of Victoria Park, in Bedminster. It was a rough joyless hovel, the landlord was an idiot, and I didn't like any of the locals.

All the places I went to tended to be like that. My needs are not great, and let's not deceive ourselves as to what are needs and what are not. Let's have the nerve to face them for what they are, right? It works out cheaper that way. Usually.







I'd blagged the advance from a new job just in time to make it for opening. In some pubs, especially the older ones, if you can catch them in the cold glare of a bright morning, the dust diffuses the light inside into this soft cloud of opaque whiteness, and it looks like oblivion. Dawn can put that sort of spin on a pub sometimes, even pubs like the Hart. The only regulars I knew by name didn't turn up until six or seven: Declan lived off house painting and fruit machines and Johnny had been in the French Foreign Legion. I don't know what he did with himself these days. Somebody said he knocked off post offices, which wasn't unbelievable.



'How's the peeping tom business, then?' asked Declan when he saw me.



'Alright.' I said. 'Busy day?'



'Not me, no chance. Working in this house up in Clifton, and they may be rich but they don't have a fucking clue, mate. Two and a half hours I did today. Funny how the toffs are supposed to be so smart, innit?'



'Get up to much?'



'Well, I had to see Jason about some stereos.'



I nod.



'Don't want a stereo, d'you?'



No, I don't want a stereo, and if I did it wouldn't be from anyone who was on business terms with Declan.



'How are you John?' I ask. Johnny hasn't spoken to me yet.



'Alright,' he concedes, begrudgingly. I'm reading an article in the paper about Michael Portillo's hair before the football finally comes on and gives us all something to do.



Arsenal beat Derby two nil. I stare blankly at the screen thinking of other things, chorusing whatever criticism seems to be universally expressed. I don't like football, I suppose, but I don't dislike it either. It has its uses. Conversation turns to future fixtures, about City, about Rovers, about football and sport in general. This night at least is saved from anything as embarrassing as politics.



Someone mentions the Tyson-Bruno fight. 'There's nothing I love to see better than two black bastards kicking the shit out of each other,' says Johnny, to general laughter, and I can hear myself amongst them; can catch the hollow, humourless ring of my voice, its quiet plea for acceptance.



Then next thing somebody's pulled the blinds all the way down for a lock-in, and I watch them unfurl like little flags, signalling the arrival of my session at what must be by now its twelfth hour. I order a large after-hours brandy and smoke a panatella at the fruit machine. I have a vicious argument with a sixty-year old man about a professional golfer I've never seen play. I stare blatantly at the young girl in the corner until her boyfriend stares blatantly back. I offer the landlord a drink. He declines. I buy Declan a lager, Johnny always buys his own.



I listen to Johnny, unusually gregarious, talk openly of the whores of Hamburg and recall with something like pride the nights when Legionnaires would gather round to drink Kronenbourg and masturbate over hard-core porn. I was thrown so much I had to go and put another tenner in the fruit.



After ten minutes, through means entirely unknown to me, I have scored fifteen pounds. The inevitable catch, of course, is that you can only collect after another win, and I'm busted shortly afterwards. Then, as I'm about to chuck it in, the fruit grants me a continue. In an effort to meet the ten-second deadline I extract the entire contents of my pocket in a single futile fistful. Change goes everywhere but the slot.



I succumb to this incoherent, blithering fury, but it dissipates when my blurred fingers prove unable to pick up the coins, and I watch them struggle, marvelling like an infant, bemused by the strange knowledge that this seemingly sentient flesh was part of my own body. I knew then that the evening's real deadline had obviously been met, and persevering for what felt like an hour I carried what I could to the bar in scooped hands. The barman took it all in exchange for a final brandy and the gag reflex shook my stomach like a depth charge.



'See you tomorrow, you bastards,' I say, buoyantly, to nobody. Then all that remained was to salute the nearest human figure, turn, rebound off the door frame and slide out into the street. Give it half an hour or so and I could strike another day off the calendar. God knows, it was the only way to tell them apart.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Serpent's Tail
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2005
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1852428902
• ISBN 13: 9781852428907
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 224
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar