Five Pubs, Two Bars and a Nightclub

Welsh writer Williams's novel-in-short-stories depicts a Cardiff rife with dockmen, hustlers, dealers, whores, shoplifters and Rastamen, all of whom seek romance, cash customers, and intrigue in the drinking and dancing establishments that entitle each episode. Williams's (Faithless) loose form gives readers a Hogarthian ramble around the ethnically various underworld of Butetown, Cardiff's tenderloin district. In ""Black Caesar's,"" Kenny Ibadulla, Butetown's biggest man, makes a misbegotten attempt to found a Nation of Islam mosque one floor below his nightclub and headquarters. (Ibadulla's men figure in later stories.) Mikey Thomson, Williams's most charming creation, is a 5-ft., 4-in. Lothario and champion shoplifter. He wants to become a pimp; instead, the women in his life--notably his wife, Tina, and his girlfriend, Lorraine--have developed a habit of roughing him up. In ""The Four Ways,"" Mikey's gift of gab gets him into sexy Tyra's bed while her husband is in jail. In ""The Packet,"" the same verbal skills ally Mikey with Kim, a BBC correspondent who gulls her bosses into running a sensational story about a bogus drug run from the island of St. Helena. In the final episode, ""The Casablanca,"" Tyra's husband, Tony Pinto, emerges from jail and wonders ""why he'd spent so much of his life learning to be so damn hard."" Adroitly double-crossing both his scummy cousin Billy and the fearsome Kenny--and leaping, at one point, action-movie style from roof to roof across downtown Cardiff--Tony finally finds a temporary way out of Butetown. Williams' Cardiffian tales form a cutthroat idyll la The Beggar's Opera; they may charm even a straightlaced reader. And devotees of the gritty new Scottish novels (Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting; Alan Warner's The Sopranos) ought to eat this Welsh counterpart right up. (July)