Bank of the Black Sheep
Ex-private investigator Robin Llewellyn wakes up handcuffed to a hospice bed, full of morphine and with a fading memory as the cancer closes in. Unfortunately, bad detectives leave a lot of loose ends.
Prosecuted for crimes he can't remember committing and pursued by cops and criminals alike for deals he has no recollection of doing, he discovers that waiting in the wilds of West Wales is a hidden fortune of the sort that men will kill for.
So Llewellyn's last case sees him in a race against the reaper to score the final haul - and find out if he is the villain he appears to be.
Reviews
Charles Bukowski meets Raymond Chandler in this meandering yet keenly plotted tale of a man at the bottom with nowhere to go but down. Sad, darkly funny and quite, quite brilliant.
A crime caper with echoes of Ealing comedy, shades of James Ellroy and even a touch of Samuel Beckett... a compelling concoction, laced with dark humour and strangely life-affirming. Robin can't go on, but he does, and we go on rooting for him right to the very end.
Robert Lewis' splendid creation Robin Llywelyn is a private eye of unsurpassed disintegration... a cracker of a novel... fizzy dialogue, superbly edgy writing and terrific humour.
Dark, bleak, sordid, sinister and very, very funny... Wonderfully poignant.
Llewellyn is the real deal... Lewis' coruscating analysis of underclass, underfoot, outcast Britain is uncomfortable and challenging
Bleakly funny, with a spectacularly flawed hero and a peculiarly uplifting (if gory) ending, BANK OF THE BLACK SHEEP is a fitting conclusion to a sequence best described as extreme noir.
The author's third novel fires on all cylinders.
Relentlessly bleak, mordantly funny, and occasionally noirish, Lewis writes brilliantly.
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