First published back in July of 2021, Welsh author David Owain Hughes’ novel ‘South By Southwest Wales: Book One’ formed the first 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.
DLS Synopsis:
It’s 2001 and crime is rampant in Cardiff, the Welsh capital city. The police are overrun and don’t have the time, energy, or patience for Samson Valentine. The private detectives of this modern world have slowly been squeezed out. Services from a time gone by. Just as Valentine himself feels. Out of touch with the fast-developing city. Most of the cops on the gangsters’ payroll anyway.
Samson Valentine was from a different age. Before he was a private eye, Samson had been a cop, and before that, a military man. But his hardboiled, don’t-give-a-crap attitude had seen both previous careers cut short. Some believed his style was too brutal, even when dealing with the thuggish and uncaring criminals of this world. Although, these days he spent his time snooping on cheating husbands and wives. Not exactly glamorous, although t was enough to scrape a living from.
However, when a prostitute named Stevie Oaks is murdered on his own doorstep, Valentine starts to look into the matter. With murdering the girl, the thugs had killed a close friend of his – the only person he felt he had left in this whole miserable world. Now she was dead. Things had gotten personal.
But the roots of corruption run deep in the capital city. All of a sudden Samson finds he’s knee-deep in the filth and deception of a highly organised criminal syndicate. A gang run by an elusive mob boss named XRay. A powerful figure no one seems to know anything about, other than he’s feared by all.
Valentine has gotten himself mixed up in a whirlwind of trouble. The gang are after a precious gemstone. A huge sparkling rock which practically fell into Valentine’s lap. Although there’s clearly more to this than the simple retrieval of a stolen property. Samson feels it in his whisky-soaked gut. But what’s behind it all, he’s yet to find out.
Through the dark, dirty streets and stinking back alleys of Cardiff, Samson Valentine will explore every lead presented to him in search of Stevie’s killers. Strangely another one of his new cases appears to be linked to this whole mess. A case involving a woman who’s convinced her husband is planning to have her killed. A devious plot driven by greed.
Samson Valentine will stop at nothing to see this one to the end. It’s the biggest case he’s worked on in years. And the deeper he digs, the more corruption he uncovers. But the money means nothing to him now. This one’s personal…
David Owain Hughes is probably better known for his wildly over-the-top sexually depraved horror concoctions. A 1940’s style crime noir is therefore somewhat out of left field from the author. Although as soon as you start reading the book, you quickly realise the author is completely and utterly at home with the change in style and genre.
At front and centre stage is our principal protagonist of the series, Samson Valentine. A fedora and trench coat wearing private eye, with an unquenchable thirst for whisky and everything that is the 1940s. In fact, when Valentine’s not sinking whisky at the Jazz Hole, he’s out walking the streets hallucinating that he’s in Chicago during the 1940’s. Throughout the book, his whisky-addled mind is constantly confusing his locale for the era he was undoubtedly born to be in. Mobsters with Tommy Guns and suit-sporting gangsters, blend with reality, as Samson tries to keep a firm grip on what’s real and what’s just the whisky.
Half the joy of the book is with how Hughes has really capitalised on the whole 1940s noir vibe. Valentine is of course the instigator and driving force behind this. The criminal gangs are all ‘palookas’ and ‘goons’. The women ‘dames’ and ‘broads’. Money is referred to as ‘cabbage’, and the city is the ‘Apple’. Honestly, the constant and consistent use of this 1940’s slang simply adds to the novel’s overall charm that much more.
Of course, Hughes has his tongue firmly wedged in his cheek throughout this. The whole embracement of the noir vibe is a purposefully exaggerated affair. But of course, it’s only Valentine who’s that way, and everyone else sees it. Although Samson is too confused, too delusional, or too damn stubborn to fully accept this.
But the book’s not a one-trick-pony. Behind the colourful comic of this noir setting is a tightly written storyline, with an ambitious plot that deepens at the turn of every page. There’s also a healthy cast of characters embedded within this criminal opus, a cast which Hughes draws upon throughout the unveiling of his elaborate ploy.
The intricately woven web of criminal activity keeps the tale racing forward with a wonderfully tight pacing. Barely a page goes by without something else coming out of the woodwork. Lies, deceit, double-crossing, the novel is veritably bursting at the seams with revelations and changes in direction.
Although ultimately, we come back to the novel’s characterisation when we sit back and consider it as a whole. Hughes has put so much into Samson Valentine. The backstory with Valentine losing not just one, but two wives to cancer. A bitter loss lingering within his whisky-soaked mind. His last wife, Angie, often conversing with him in his head. Samson responding out loud, whilst passers-by cross the street at the sight of this strange fedora wearing man seemingly talking to himself.
There’s just so much to love about the novel. The wacky, wild, web of the Welsh criminal underbelly. The rich and over-the-top noir dialogue. The lovingly fleshed-out characters. Goons and criminal bosses. Dames and corrupt cops. It’s got it all, and in absolute bucketloads.
For an immersion into a time seemingly a million miles from our own, this novel is an absolute masterclass. The second you start upon another chapter, you’re there, in Samson Valentine's world. The grit and grime of the place. The gut-honesty of his one-man mission. The James Bond style villains and constantly deepening plot.
Hughes can write an insanely immersive crime noir, that’s for damn sure! Samson Valentine is undisputedly one of the most ingeniously sculpted characters I’ve had the pleasure to discover. And the prospect of seeing where his reckless life takes us in the next instalment, is enough to have me chomping at the bit for Book Two to arrive.
Trust me, you all need a piece of Samson Valentine in your life, you bunch of goddamn palookas!
The novel runs for a total of 335 pages.
© DLS Reviews
