My review of the final Lowtown novel is likely to be the shortest review I've ever written for a novel I enjoyed so thoroughly. But delving too deep into this story would risk spoilers, so I'm forced into brevity. I loved the preceding two volumes of the Lowtown trilogy and was both excited and saddened to know that my time with the one of the most irredeemable and yet most compelling protagonists I've ever encountered was coming to a close. Polansky has been labelled as a 'writer's writer' by folks with far more education and experience than I, but I would go one step further and say that these novels are perfectly suited to any reasonably well read person who isn't likely to be put off by a novel that takes a long, unflinching flinching look at the darkest parts of society and human nature. These books aren't easy to read, they are violent and profane with hardly a decent person in sight, but they are so compellingly well written and so deft in their observations about the cold facts of human nature that it's a definite shame they haven't found a wider audience.
