2007-07-28 Unpleasant but addictive story

It may be a rambling story with not a lot happening, using the classic structure seen in fiction over the last decade of two intertwined story lines but this book's achievement is not in action story telling. Instead what keeps you reading to the end is the depicting of the mindset and thoughts of the one armed main character, his loss of his arm being due to earlier drug abuse days back in Liverpool as vividly recalled and the practical impact of losing a limb as he tries to rebuild his life in Wales all done in the first voice, with the parallel tale told in the third person of the two scousers on his trail who ultimately fail to make contact, all handled in black humour and very similar of the two incompetent hitmen protagonists of the Guy Ritchie movie, "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels".

Griffiths' covering of life in the lower reaches of society especially the interaction and impact of drugs and criminal culture is very well done and despite other reviewers picking up on the correctness of certain words, having spent 3 years in Liverpool I soon found myself falling into the scouse patois as I read.

Despite its unpleasant storyline, a strangely addictive read.