Aberystwyth Mon Amour

The conceit of setting a noir detective thriller in Aberystwyth is a very clever idea: it would be funny in any conditions and it's hilarious if you know the place a little.

Pryce does a pretty good job of keeping it up for the length of a book, although he's clearly straining the limits of inventiveness to find new jokes by the time he gets to the end, resulting in a bit of silliness. The whole thing works in a way that Jasper Fforde's stories generally don't, because, however fantastic the background, the characters take it seriously and have enough psychological depth to them to convince the reader to take it seriously too.

The notion of Raymond Chandler’s mean Los Angeles streets being translated to Aberystwyth seems far-fetched, but Malcolm Pryce’s Aberystwyth is not the small seaside town that some of us know.

Instead, it is more like a part of a Wales from an alternative history, where the druids are a mafia-like organisation, where religion - extreme chapel - still holds sway, where women still wear stovepipe hats, and where Wales lost control of Patagonia in a disastrous colonial war in the mid-1960s. The plots tick over relentlessly, and the private eye, Louie Knight - like other PIs, from Philip Marlowe to Harry Moseby - is usually several steps behind the action. The body count is high and the writing often hilarious.

Instead of magical realism, show more this is more like magical noir. The clue may lie in the author’s biography, which may be true: Pryce, brought up in Shrewsbury and Aberystwyth, has lived and worked abroad since the early 1990s, and currently lives in Bangkok. His Wales is the parts distilled through a haze of memory.

The fourth in the series, Don’t Cry For Me Aberystwyth, connects Adolf Eichmann to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, without leaving the town - or at least the immediate area. The first, Aberystwyth Mon Amour, is probably the most ‘Welsh’ of the books, and culminates in a parody of the dambusters’ raid over a Welsh reservoir. And I promise that knowing this about the plot will not be a spoiler. show less

I read this a long time ago - and finally re-read it. And, its better than I remember. Tight writing, that takes the stereotypes of the gritty noir mystery genre, and than totally turns around 90 degrees and takes a new direction. The characters are exactly what you expect, but more so. It is is wonderfully... refreshing. There are no cardboard characters in this story, although it stays true to the genre. Its a bit like reading a comic book - everything is bigger than life. One thing - it is quite a dark story. The Aberystwyth of this story is dark, sad, and corrupt (run by evil druids, no less). The author manages to keep the city on the side of interesting rather than depressing. And, the story is fun. We have druids, witches, truant show more kids, boy geniuses, lounge singers who want to sing opera, ice cream joints, and tea cozies, not to mention militant missionaries. The story shouldn't work. But it does. And you should go and read it.

One thing, the book is written for a UK audience, and possibly even Welsh - there are names and words I didn't know, and for the first four chapters or so, I kept having to stop reading to look up words that I didn't know. This is not a criticism- its the nature of reading a book set in a place that has its own language quirks. show less

The first of Malcolm Pryce's Louie Knight Mysteries introduces us to a world where the language and mores of a Raymond Chandler novel are transported to the small Welsh seaside town of Aberystwyth. The local bars are replaced by an ice cream vendor and a 24 hour whelk stall, the girls at the strip club dress in flirtatious versions of Welsh national costume. As this suggests, the version of Wales Pryce presents is slightly surreal, with witchcraft and runes and a town council run by a mob of corrupt Druids. Wales is a former colonial power, a disastrous attempt to conquer Patagonia staining the national conscience (“the Welsh Vietnam”).

Louie Knight, the town's only private eye, is asked to look into the disappearance of a stripper's show more cousin, and becomes enmeshed in the murder of several schoolboys and, of course, a plot that threatens the town. He narrates the proceedings like Philip Marlowe, which nicely counterpoints the small town setting and the Welsh accents that come across in the dialogue.

Aberystwyth Mon Amour is an interesting, light read, but suffers from an unevenness of tone. While there are many witty, comic moments, Pryce doesn't quite seem to know how to tread the line between this and the darkness in the story – both the inherent darkness in the murders and the themes of loss and displacement that permeate the book. This uncertainty also seems to affect how distant from our reality this Aberystwyth is; for me he could have embraced the surreal aspects more, and indeed seems to do so toward the end of the book. It was somewhat reminiscent of the world of Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next, a reality skewed from our own at a rakish angle, but I felt that Pryce's reality needs to be slightly better defined. I'm intrigued to see how his style develops; if the tone and setting can solidify then it may well a thoroughly enjoyable series.

The next book is [b:Last Tango in Aberystwyth|398082|Last Tango in Aberystwyth (Aberystwyth Noir, #2)|Malcolm Pryce|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174426645s/398082.jpg|387540] and the third [b:The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth|828415|The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth (Aberystwyth Noir, #3)|Malcolm Pryce|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1178735314s/828415.jpg|12518], which I think may just be the best book title of all time. show less

Funny in parts... but overall rather too silly, 14 Jun. 2016

This review is from: Aberystwyth Mon Amour (Paperback)
A take-off of Raymond Chandler's detective novels, but instead of the clubs and speak-easies of 50s America, the action takes place in the Welsh seaside town of Aberystwyth. A town where the Druids definitely run the show, where the lovely Myfanwy Montez sings in the Moulin Goch club, and where "Usual is it?" refers not to a scotch on the rocks but a double with extra ripple. And where meetings take place at the 24 hour a day whelk stall, or in an abandoned caravan (accompanied by a cuppa soup with a dash of rum.)
There were several laugh-out-loud moments for me, not least the description of Dai Brainbocs, a gifted youth who show more has disappeared:
"Brilliant at ...just about everything he turned his hand to. He spent last summer transcribing Proust's 'A la Recherche du Temps Perdu' into runes."
But the plotline did degenerate into extreme silliness by the end. Nonetheless have ordered my Welsh sister-in-law a copy as she hails from Borth and will, I think, find it entertaining. show less

Incredibly funny send-up of noir thrillers and the Welsh - having lived in Wales for several years I laughed till I cried when reading this.

Doing for Aberystwyth what Robert Rankin and Jasper Fforde do for Brentford and Swindon, you'll enjoy this if you like that sort of slightly-surreal parallel-reality humorous fiction. 'Far-fetched fiction', as I believe Rankin calls it. The plot actually works (rather than being just a flimsy framework for hanging gags off), and one of the reveals at the climax (location of a hidden document) is as clever as anything in a serious detective novel (plus the clue was there earlier, so you won't feel cheated if you're the sort who likes to try and work these things out ahead of the characters).