‘Meat Bubbles and other stories’ by Tom Leins

Meat Bubbles and other stories

Private investigator Joe Rey gets down and dirty in the not-so-picturesque seaside-town of Paignton. Tracking down a disturbed plastic surgeon, he encounters a variety of low-life scumbags, prostitutes, hitmen and bent coppers. If he’s lucky, he might wake up with all his body parts intact, but when almost everyone seems to be toting a gun or a knife, the odds are against it…

‘Not for the faint-hearted’ is a phrase I’ve used a lot, but it really is true in this case. Tom Leins has created a world that is so densely populated with horrible people, murder, rape and a generally bleak outlook, you might think it’s going to be hard to enjoy. But enjoy it I did, and though I occasionally got a bit confused about who the good guys were, it all turns out fine in the end. Relatively speaking.

Packed with crude language, crude characters and some corking one-liners, this is an interesting and down-to-earth take on the old private detective story.