PAUL D. BRAZILL - THE LAST LAUGH (2016)

Synopsis/blurb...

From France, to Spain, to the northeast of England, hit men, gangsters, corrupt cops, drunks, punks, and petty thieves all tumble toward the abyss. The stories in The Last Laugh are vivid and violent slices of Brit Grit and international noir, full of gaudy characters and dialogue sharp enough to cut your throat. The Last Laugh is a violent and blackly comic look at life through a shot glass darkly.

“If you took Ken Bruen's candor, the best of Elmore Leonard's dialogues, sprinkled in some Irvine Welsh, and dragged it all through the dirtiest ditch in South London, the result will be something akin to Brazill's writing.” - Gabino Iglesias (author of Zero Saints and Gutmouth) 

“A broad range of cultural strands come together in the melting pot and form a delicious stew of criminal adventure... The observations are sharp and the characters create small nuclear explosions as they collide with each other.” - Nigel Bird (author of Southsiders) 

'Brazill isn't just a writer; he's a poet and you can take any of his stories and write a master's thesis on just the language employed.-' Les Edgerton (Bomb!, The Bitch)

20 short stories here from the master.

Humour, violence, action, horror, scams, capers and more.

Cross paths with .......posties, barmen, club owners, Petula Clark, pig farmers, Frank Sinatra, Pink Floyd, Heaven 17, Ronnie and Reggie, Polish molls, Ukrainian whores, nagging wives and hen-pecked husbands, dead pimps, hitch-hikers and taxi drivers, literary agents and exploding seagulls.

Visit...... run down pubs and Knightsbridge,  Covent Garden and Warsaw and Cambridge bookshops, casinos and betting shops, dirty record shops and Brazill's Northern creation - Seatown,

Cultural references abound, razor sharp observations, pithy put downs and sharp one liners...

"a shite for sore eyes"........

"mid-giro crisis"..........

"so bent you could use him as a pipe cleaner"......

"Howie's jaw dropped so much you could have scraped carpet fluff from his chin."....

"Toga was so far in the closet he was in Narnia".........

"if there’s one thing guaranteed to get my goat, guaranteed to wind me fucking up, it’s if someone pisses down my back and tries to tell me it’s raining.’  

‘Seen it, I’ve had it. Many times. Mind you, Eileen Calloway has had enough cock to make a handrail round The Titanic.
They don’t call her Minge The Merciless for nothing.’ 
‘I heard they called her Come On Eileen because everyone had,’ said Garner. He smirked."

And my absolute favourite - so on the money! Nice to know it's not just me who can't stand the smarmy git.......

"The television was showing another bloody cookery programme. The fat lipped boy with the counterfeit cockney accent again. Peaslee wasn’t sure when it was that domestic drudgery like cooking and gardening had become elevated to the level of the works of Beethoven and Chaucer but it was another sign of what was wrong with the modern world. The pursuit of excellence had been replaced by the aspiration towards mediocrity."

The likes of Paul D. Brazill makes reading an absolute joy.

5 from 5

Paul D. Brazill has his website/blog here.

He was on the blog yesterday - answering a few questions here.

And previously with Kill Me Quick, 13 Shots of Noir and Guns of Brixton. 
And more than a passing mention here - August, 2016 - 31 Days, 31 Shorts.

Catch him on Twitter - @PaulDBrazill

Read in September, 2016.

Thanks to Mike at All Due Respect books for my copy of this one - website here.