Robin Llywelyn, ostensibly a private detective, wakes up in a hospice with amnesia, handcuffed to a bed after a week-long infusion of morphine. Such a state gives him a real slow start, along with the reader. Additionally, he is told he has lung cancer with just a couple of months to live. Actually, it seems from what follows that he can go on forever.
It turns out that Llywelyn was involved in some kind of scam, but of course he can’t remember what it was. And so, he sets out inadvertently to find out about his past, bumbling his way to make a final score and to atone for his past transgressions before his end. For much of the novel, to this reader, it dragged on with a lot of wearying prose and observations. It is not until near the conclusion that the novel really becomes interesting, and then we are drawn into the real story.
Bank apparently is the last in a trilogy of Llywelyn detective stories and, given the medical prognosis, it would seem to be just that.
