Very few people manage to pull off the trick of creating a humourous story ingrained in the genre it owes it's existence to, while successfully keeping its tongue firmly in it's cheek and winking at its audience. Many readers are not able to make that step from the genre they enjoy meaning that few authors are able to bridge that gap and become successful and well known from doing this. For those authors who are successful I'm thinking of humourous fiction aimed at specific genres (like SF and Fantasy) of the stature of Terry Pratchett and Harry Harrison or by Douglas Adams who successfully manages to do both genres and mix is a detective noir thriller with The Dirk Gently Omnibus. In the case of such novels you have to judge (1) Do they provide enough to meet the definitions of the genre being parodied (2) is it a good story and (3) is it funny.Also these novels often require a reader to be able to suspend their disbelief due to the silliness of some of the things they propose. More so in this case because of the 'off kilter' nature of the world created by Malcolm Pryce. Did I enjoy this?..Not entirely. It certainly achieves the noir mystery thriller mark containing all of the accepted elements; It is a highly complex tale of corruption, lies, deception, and obsession with the main character being morally ambiguous and who is deceived by everyone while uncovering lies and falling for the wrong girl. One thing that didn't work was I never really felt the sense of danger or capability that noir detectives (like Marlow and Spade) give off. So it is fair to say that it is largely successful by my first count. On the 2nd count, 'the story' didn't really hold my attention. Despite being a shortish novel it took me a couple of weeks to finish this and while I enjoyed the ride I never really felt compelled to turn pages and finish the story in fewer sittings.On the 3rd count, the humour. Most of the enjoyment i derived from the book was because of the place in which it was set. I holidayed in and around the Aberystwyth area for many years and it already has that slightly trapped in the 1970's feel about the place and Pryce really nailed that feeling while turning the weirdness dial to 11 by stepping beyond and placing his story in an alternate reality version where Wales had it's own colonial ambitions and wars... But I'm not sure that the humour really worked beyond my enjoyment of the setting...sometimes It felt like there was weirdness for weirdness sake. I never got that with Adams' books but I did here.On balance I enjoyed this and I may well pick up the remainder of the series at some time in the future. Pryce certainly has an eye for detail that makes his novel work. (for example the PE teacher character really works and we probably all encountered such and individual during our schooling). The world setting (in all it's wonderful weirdness) is now established as are the main characters. Maybe the next novel, having got those difficult issues aside, will work better for me.
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 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 Last Tango in Aberystwyth and the third The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth, which I think may just be the best book title of all time.
What do You think about Aberystwyth Mon Amour (2015)?
I've given this 4 stars. I really wanted to give it 3.5 because I liked it - as evidenced by the fact that I pretty much read it non-stop, but I also didn't like it as much as I thought I would as evidenced by the fact that I didn't particularly laugh at any of it. I smiled occasionally, but that was as far as it got which, judging from the blurb on the back, is the wrong kind of reaction because this is a book with such abundant comic talent, apparently. Maybe it was too abundant. Maybe I couldn't see the comedy wood for the comedy trees.I was expecting it to be much more of a parody of the detective novels of old and not a bizarre mirror universe in which Aberystwyth is ruled over by a Druid mafia and in which the body of a child can be disolved in the cheese factory. Although, having said that, I've not really been to Wales much so it could all be true.I've started the second book, mind, so it can't have been all bad.
—Jacob Chinchen
There's a particular strain of whimsy running through British fiction that I can't quite figure out. Sometimes, as with Jasper Fforde, I find it tedious; very occasionally, as with a few Robert Rankin and an even fewer Tom Holt novels, it works. Terry Pratchett is the only person who has pulled it off with any consistency: a comic novel with a dead serious plot. Malcolm Pryce veers between a bewildering variety of registers in this novel, encompassing schoolboy humour (a girl with the surname Blojob), absurd comedy, ripe Chandeleresque metaphors, hard-boiled meditations on human nature and a mystery plot that is ridiculous to the point of burlesque, while still striving for some genuine emotional resonance. It all seems a bit too much, but it works well enough for a harmless weekend afternoon read. Maybe the joke will wear thin if I try and read any more in this series.
—Jayaprakash Satyamurthy
Well I sniggered & snorted my way in a very unladylike fashion through the first half of this book (much to hubby's annoyance!) It was so my sense of humour, I would add a few quotes but there's far too many great throwaway one-liners to mention ;o)I could visualise it all before me like a 1940s B/W film & kept "hearing" a Bogart sounding voiceover. While I continued sniggering into the second half, the story deteriorated for me lapsing into fantasy/silly territory rather than the black comedy I was so enjoying. But overall,great fun...worth reading for the first few chapters half alone.
—Plum-crazy
