Reviews
"Thanks Rob Gittins. You've gone and done it again. I had to fight back the tears reading those last few pages. I loved this book!
- Tony de Sarzec
"Rob Gittins writes with convincing ease as the cynical gumshoe Jimmy. The reader is drawn into the world of New York in the 1950s, where Marilyn Monroe is glimpsed in a bar and the scandals come thick and fast. The mix of fact and fiction works seamlessly as Jimmy follows Dylan Thomas through the last few desperate weeks of his life. There are scenes of painful embarrassment of which Dylan is entirely unaware as he staggers towards oblivion.
- Lucy Walter, Gwales
"Hired to dig dirt on Dylan Thomas during his last visit to New York, a private investigator instead finds the image of his own ruined life in the poet's. Stung by a 1953 profile in the coyly unnamed Time magazine, the distinguished but unruly Welsh poet has threatened a libel suit... Gittins mines Thomas' real-life last days for these obvious lessons with sensitivity and devotion.
- Laurie Muchnick, Kirkus Reviews
"The Poet and the Private Eye is a refreshing cocktail of facts and fiction... The skills of a screenwriter can be sensed throughout this novel. Rob Gittins reminds us how Thomas' words managed to hit far for a global audience.
- Naomi Garnault, New Welsh Review online
"Gittins paints a moving portrait of a talented man feted by the same public complicit in his death.
- Publishers Weekly
"This is an excellent read with all the excitement and page-turning enjoyment of a good story and the additional buzz of seeing stories of Subject Thomas which have not perhaps been seen before. The quality of the writing is high, the research immaculate. It has thrills, shocks, humour and perhaps even a subtext of devotion.
- Liz Whittaker, Tivyside Advertiser
