Atdtda24: Another argument for reincarnation, 688-689

[Paul Nightingale]

And so, having ended the previous section "ready to hear" Lew is now en
route to Cambridge, feeling "the stomach spasms of exile ..." etc, "running
back over the years since Troth had left him". If the identity of
Renfrew/Werfner has been problematised (685), then so has Lew's own
identity: hence, "... some other version of Lew Basnight bilocated off
somewhere he could gain no clear sense of" (688). The "voice, maybe his own"
that recalls him from his reverie is confrontational: cf. the "voice Reef
had not heard before but recognised nonetheless" on 659. On that occasion
Reef had to deal with an accusation of betrayal; here, Lew acknowledges the
different kind of detective he might aspire to be. One can hear the mean
streets beckoning.