The Snowman by
Jörg Fauser
pbk out September 04
(Bitter Lemon Press)
at £8.99
Blum's business deals aren't going well. No-one wants to buy his collection of
vintage Danish porn mags, he's going to have to break into his emergency funds, and
the police have given him 24 hours to leave Malta. Then fate intervenes. Blum finds
himself landed with a left-luggage ticket from Munich train station which leads to five
pounds of pure Peruvian cocaine. That adds up to a street value of over $600,000.
Money for old rope. His lucky break. But it's not that simple: when Blum tries to sell
the stuff things go from difficult to downright deadly. A farcical misadventure played
out in the seedy hotel rooms, brothels and gloomy bars of European cities. With a
cast of shady characters, many of them drug-addled, and no telling who might be
working under-cover, this is a gritty and slyly funny story.
Fauser was himself a heroin addict until his 30s. Snowman was his first novel and to
a large extent he wrote about the world he saw in the down-at-heel haunts he
frequented: about the life of the underdog, the petty criminal, the fixer, the prostitute
and the junkie. And he did so with a healthy dose of wit.
(
Cath Staincliffe
author of the popular Sal Kilkenny mysteries and the series creator of TV Blue Murder)
The Snowman by
Jörg Fauser
