First published back in February of 2022, Welsh author David Owain Hughes’ novel ‘Any Which Way But South Wales: Book Two’ formed the second instalment into the author’s ‘South By Southwest Wales’ crime noir series, featuring the 1940’s-esque private eye Samson Valentine.
The novel was later rereleased within the ‘South By Southwest Wales: Omnibus’ (2024) which collected together the first three books within the series.
Fresh out of rehab, Samson Valentine’s mind was the clearest it’d been in years. Thanks to the good people at the hospital, Valentine now understood he lived in the Welsh capital city of Cardiff, and not Chicago. He also now recognised it wasn’t the 1940s, nor did he believe any longer that his two deceased wives were speaking to him. He understood it’d all simply been a figment of his imagination brought on by alcohol abuse, stress, and anxiety.
Samson had since kicked the booze and smokes and somehow gotten himself into relative shape. In doing so he now felt far more in control of his own life than ever before. Although he still dressed, talked and acted like a hardboiled P.I. from a decade long past. Because that was still who he was. Samson Valentine couldn’t be anything other.
Valentine had started working cases again. Nothing big, although he now worked with the new chief of police – Gary Broadbank. Together they’d just brought in another notorious criminal who’d been peddling the worst smut around Cardiff. Known by those within the criminal underground as ‘The Brain’, the jughead was part of XRays corporation. A criminal organisation which had been regaining its chokehold on the Welsh capital city.
Although, it wasn’t not just Xray and his mob of hatchet-men the people of Cardiff had to contend with. The gangster boss had recently paired up with the brother of Alligator, the crime boss who Valentine had brought to an end. With Xray and Richard Lovell now in criminal cahoots, Valentine and Broadbank had their work cut out for them once again.
Furthermore, the pair faced another big problem. A serial killer was at large, stalking the streets of Cardiff. A sadistic killer the media had dubbed The Widower Maker. No one seemed to know who the killer was. The victims having been brutally mutilated, the latest of which had “Eat the Fucking Rich Cunts” carved into her cold dead flesh.
But when Roxie ends up dead at the hands of The Widower Maker, shit just got personal. Now, Samson Valentine will stop at nothing to catch this twisted serial killer and end their reign of terror. Although in doing so, Valentine will need to contend with both Xray and Lovell. The partners in crime.
With facing so many maniacs, Valentine will need to follow every lead and use every trick in the book to get to the root of the rotten malignancy that’s gradually decaying the underbelly of the city. But with so many bad apples at play, Valentine’s chances of uncovering the villains before one of their hatchet-men gets to him first, are slim.
This might be Samson Valentine’s most challenging and dangerous case yet…
I have to admit, I was somewhat surprised to find that Samson Valentine, the hardboiled P.I. with an obsession for 1940s Chicago, had gone tee-fucking-total. Not only that, but he’s also given up on the smokes (swapping them for a pocket full of breadsticks), he’s lost some weight, and pretty much screwed his head firmly back on.
Good for him. But to be brutally honest, I was a tad concerned that this new lease of life might prove detrimental to the tongue-in-cheek grittiness of the story. Essentially, one of the most-loved aspects about the first book was the character of Sam Valentine. Even though he was a quintessentially broken, not quite right in the head, alcoholic mess – he managed to keep his shit together enough to somehow root out the rotten apples and stamp out the criminal gangs.
I frigging loved how Valentine would be constantly sucking on a cigarillo whilst knocking back whisky after whisky before heading out for the dangerous meeting. It was basically a 1940s crime noir on super-steroids.
However, in cleaning up Valentine, Hughes thankfully has managed to not water down the character in any way. In fact, he’s just as spit-and-sawdust wild as he was in the first novel. If anything, now he’s more focussed on the bad guys and less distracted by all those wacky hallucinations.
That said, I do somewhat miss all of the over-the-top antihero character traits. Sober Valentine might be a more effective Valentine, however there was a heap of fun to be had when he was fun racing around after all those jug-heads, dodging the spray of imaginary Tommy guns, and trying to put all the pieces together whilst sinking whisky after whisky.
Although where a cleaner Valentine might have added a safety belt to the story’s rollercoaster seats, the introduction of a whole new threat in the form of The Widower Maker, has countered this by upping the speed of the ride. Furthermore, Hughes has somewhat ingeniously interwoven this serial killer nutjob into an elaborate plot, where everyone’s connected in some way, and its down to Valentine to try to follow these links through to the rotten core.
This is where the strongest element to the whole book rests – the elaborately woven web of characters and the criminal corruption that’s running through this web.
The other aspect of the book that’s incredibly effective is the backstory that’s been built up with many of the characters. Perhaps the most notable of these is with The Widower Maker. For this backstory we’re cast back to when the character was a young lad, at the point when he joins a band of misfits calling themselves ‘The Lost’.
This wonderfully fleshed-out backstory is perhaps the highlight of the novel, feeling almost Stephen King-esque in its richness, and the influence it has on the character development and the latter aspects of the storyline as a whole.
Another point I should make is that Hughes has clearly upped the ante as far as the brutality within the story goes. We’ve got a serial killer on the loose, and the fucker’s one nasty piece of work. In fact, his backstory is enough to make Ted Bundy sit up and take note. Furthermore, the psycho isn’t just some lone wolf wacko. He has connections and he’s in cahoots with other psychopathic nutters. As I said, Hughes has gone to town weaving everything together.
Ultimately the story works as an elaborate, fast-paced and high-octane crime noir that twists and turns like an earthworm drowning in petrol. The tale is both wild and tightly layered, with a mishmash of characters that come and go in a veritable blur.
The novel absolutely sticks to the brief with being manically over-the-top, with bucket loads of adrenaline-pumping action and gritty gangster shenanigans to keep any good fan of this author’s work grinning from ear to ear throughout.
The novel runs for a total of 397 pages.
© DLS Reviews
Other ‘South By Southwest Wales’ instalments:
