Malcolm Pryce's Aberystwyth books

[Fez of Mahrez]

Anyone else a fan of these? Reading the third one at the moment. They get better and better.

[Knighton Matt]

Anyone else a fan of these? Reading the third one at the moment. They get better and better.

Can't say I have mate what's the crack with them?

[The People's Hero]

Yeah, let us in on it?

[Fez of Mahrez]

Yeah, let us in on it?

Hard to explain. They're set in Aberystwyth but everything is slightly weird. In the first book, the town is run by a gang called the Druids. There is a seedy club with nightclub singer/stripper/prostitutes where girls dress up in stovepipe hats and very little else. The main character is a private eye called Louie Knight, it's a first-person narration and the books are all about cases he is given to solve. It's all a bit twisted, though.

For example, the blurb on the back of the one I'm reading at the moment goes like this;

"There is nothing unusual about the barrel-organ man who walks into private detective Louie Knight's office. Apart from the fact that he has lost his memory. And his monkey is a former astronaut. And he is carrying a suitcase that he is too terrified to open. And he wants a murder investigated. The only thing unusual about the murder is that it took place a hundred years ago. And needs solving by the following week."

etc. It's dead good. The three books are currently on 3 for 2 in Waterstones, plug plug.

Not to give anything away but there's a great bit in the one I'm reading at the moment about how this guy gets given a suitcase by left luggage and he has no memory of who he is. He opens the suitcase and there's a photo of a little girl, some letters about her and the address of her mother. He guesses that he must be the father who abandoned them in the letters so he writes to the mother, falls (so he thinks, back) in love with her and arranges to meet up with her and the girl. Then a guy turns up from left luggage and says he got given the wrong suitcase. So then he has no idea who he is again. I think that's brilliant personally.