What startles about THE LAST LLANELLI TRAIN is the confidence and maturity of the voice; it's intriguing how one so young has managed to mix Ellroy, Chandler, Derek Raymond, even shades of Beckett.... It's an incredible feat.... Rob Lewis displays a fascinating familiarity with and knowledge of not just drinking and the frenzy of sexual yearnings but also, and most powerfully, the ineffable sadnesses of the world. That he also manages to make us laugh out loud amongst all this anguish is a minor miracle.

Another new Welsh crime writer, another private eye (albeit operating on the seedy side of Bristol) and another winner... 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.

As a first novel it is quite an achievement; the writing is assured and confident, the humour gentle and dark, the plot classically private eye with the expected twists and double-dealings... It is a total gem; it kills dead the cliché alkie gumshoe for once and for all and breathes more new life into the crime genre, which for me just continues to blossom.

A jet-black comedy about an ageing and alcoholic misanthropic private eye in a debut novel emulating and updating the vintage hard-boiled style of Hammett and Chandler.

It’s Bukowski’s PULP gone West Country.