From Aberystwyth with Love - Softcover

Pryce, Malcolm

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0747595194 ISBN 13: 9780747595199

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2009

It is a sweltering August in Aberystwyth: the bandstand melts, the Pier droops, and Sospan the ice-cream seller experiments with some dangerously avant-garde new flavours. A man wearing a Soviet museum curator's uniform walks into Louie Knight's office and spins a wild and impossible tale of love, death, madness and betrayal. Sure, Louie had heard about Hughesovka, the legendary replica of Aberystwyth built in the Ukraine by some crazy nineteenth-century Czar. But he hadn't believed that it really existed until he met Uncle Vanya. Now the old man's story catapults him into the neon-drenched wilderness of Aberystwyth Prom in search of a girl who mysteriously disappeared thirty years ago. His life imperilled by snuff philatelists and a renegade spinning wheel salesman, Louie finds his fate depending on two most unlikely talismans - a ticket to Hughesovka and a Russian cosmonaut's sock.

Review:

'Malcolm Pryce is the king of Welsh noir and he dishes up a dastardly mix of gothic comedy where Edgar Allen Poe meets Phoenix Nights in a flurry of blood-stained absurdity' Sunday Telegraph 'You'll weep and laugh, on the same page. Wonderful' Guardian 'Pryce's Aberystwyth is populated by the same hoods, crooks, heavies, conmen, liars, informers, dealers and bureaucrats that prop up the street corners of Raymond Chandler's LA, Louie himself possessing the same unshakable idealism and acid tongue as Philip Marlowe' Time Out 'Poor Aberystwyth. Malcolm Pryce has taken this blameless town and turned it into a nightmarish world ... his plots are as satisfying as those of some of the best straight practitioners' Daily Telegraph

Synopsis:

Hughesovka? Sure, private detective Louie Knight had heard the stories, he'd heard about the legendary replica of Aberystwyth built in the Ukraine by some crazy nineteenth-century Czar. But he didn't believe it. He thought it was all phooey, just a land for dreamers and romantics where every house was an ice cream castle in the air. But all that changed when the museum curator of the fabled Shangri-la turned up in his office with a wild and crazy tale of love, death, madness and betrayal. Forced to swallow his scepticism, Louie is soon adrift in the neon-drenched wilderness of Aberystwyth Prom, pursued by snuff philatelists and a renegade spinning wheel salesman, and clutching two most unlikely talismans - a ticket to Hughesovka and a Russian cosmonaut's sock.Aberystwyth's only private eye and his sidekick Calamity Jane return as they swap the train to Dovey Junction for the Orient Express and try to unravel a murder mystery that is bizarre, even by their own exceptional standards.

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0747595194
• ISBN 13: 9780747595199
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288