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商品の説明
内容説明
Schoolboys are disappearing all over Aberystwyth and nobody knows why. Louie Knight, the town's private investigator, soon realises that it is going to take more than a double ripple from Sospan, the philosopher cum ice-cream seller, to help find out what is happening to these boys and whether or not Lovespoon, the Welsh teacher, Grand Wizard of the Druids and controller of the town, is more than just a sinister bully. And just who was Gwenno Guevara?
Amazon.co.uk
Malcolm Pryce's witty and scabrous comic thriller Aberystwyth Mon Amour is an original and diverting entry into the field of black-comedy writing--a genre which has enjoyed a long and healthy lineage, from Voltaire through Evelyn Waugh to the present day although lately it is pretty well the preserve of crime fiction. Making the unexciting Welsh town of Aberystwyth seem as fascinating and dangerous for his hardboiled 'tec as the mean streets of Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles is a daunting task but it's a trick Pryce pulls off with considerable aplomb.
Throughout Aberystwyth, schoolboys are vanishing without trace, and Louie Knight, the town's only private investigator, becomes involved when he has a visit from the exotic singer Myfanwy Montez (love the name!). She is the star of Wales' most outrageous nightclub, and is keen for Louie to track down her missing cousin, known as Evans the Boot. Aided by such eccentrics as philosopher-cum-ice-cream seller Sospan, Louie finds himself encountering a plot quite as labyrinthine as any which exercised Philip Marlowe. Surely Lovespoon, Grand Wizard of the Druids and the town's most powerful citizen, had a hand in the disappearances?
Nothing is quite as it seems in Pryce's outrageous and irreverent tale, which functions as a canny thriller as much as a wry parody. A good deal of the humour comes from relocating Chandler's sun-baked California locales to a parochial Welsh town, and all the clichés are ruthlessly exploded: Louie is visited in his seedy office by his sultry female client in time-honoured fashion. But it's the language, which leaps off the page, that really marks Pryce out as a stylist of no mean skill, and his bizarre refraction of Marlowe-speak is a real delight:
By the time I reached the whelk stall the drizzle had finally made up its mind and turned into rain, driving forward hard off the sea and into my face. The booth was quiet: no-one there except a kid in charge--a pimply adolescent in a grubby white coat and a silly cardboard hat. I ordered the special and waited, as the youth kept a wary eye on me; trouble was never far away at this time of night.. --Barry Forshaw --このテキストは、絶版本またはこのタイトルには設定されていない版型に関連付けられています。
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カスタマーレビュー
Amazon.com で最も参考になったカスタマーレビュー (beta)
Amazon.com:
8件のカスタマーレビュー
10 人中、10人の方が、｢このレビューが参考になった｣と投票しています。
Amusing dark humour
2002/10/22
形式:ペーパーバック
Malcolm Pryce has mastered understated humour with this book. There is a slightly dark edge to the whole book. The visual style of the book comes off the page very clearly as it captures the slightly seedy underside of a family seaside resort in Wales.
We follow the bizarre lives of a Dick Tracey-esque Private investigator, Aber's answer to Quasimodo and the Druid organisation represented as a cross between the Freemasons and the Cosa Nostra.
The killer joke would be spoiled if I told you, but the truth about Mr Lovespoon is truly shocking!!
We follow the bizarre lives of a Dick Tracey-esque Private investigator, Aber's answer to Quasimodo and the Druid organisation represented as a cross between the Freemasons and the Cosa Nostra.
The killer joke would be spoiled if I told you, but the truth about Mr Lovespoon is truly shocking!!
8 人中、8人の方が、｢このレビューが参考になった｣と投票しています。
Strange and delightful
2002/11/14
形式:ペーパーバック
The more you know about Welsh culture and folklore, the funnier this book is. The sultry chanteuse sings peppy Welsh folksongs, the hooker with a heart of gold wears a basque and the stovepipe hat of female folk costume, and the evil Welsh teacher wants to repopulate Cantref-y-Gwaelod, the sunken land said to lie under Cardigan Bay just north of town. Pryce knows the geography of Aberystwyth and the surrounding area like the back of his hand--having lived in Aber in the early '90s, I could see exactly where events were taking place--yet it's all slightly twisted, like the addition of a Welsh war in Patagonia sometime in the 1950's. The very idea of a Chandleresque noir mystery set in Aber, of all places, is so absurdly wonderful... I hope there will be a follow-up, and soon!
6 人中、6人の方が、｢このレビューが参考になった｣と投票しています。
Raymond Chandler meets Dr. Who and Ford Prefect
2007/8/17
形式:ペーパーバック
While in one of my frequent trips to England, I chanced upon this series of books set in Aberystwyth, my family's ancestral home; hence a read was irresistable.
There are four of them published to date (more please), and you should read them in order as the characters recur in each book and are introduced sequentially. Although the characterization is best in the later books as Pryce gets going.
Simply put, they are zany. Pryce not only weaves fantasy into Wales (but remember that Arthurian tales emanate from nearby), but throws in Wittgensteinian metaphysics. As an aside, Druids control the Aberystwyth mafia. I certainly have no idea if his geography is accurate (see other reviews on this page), and I know that I did not recognize all the allusions, but he a much more profound writer than would be suggested. He provokes some pretty good questions about how we perceive one another and the extent to which fraternal love and ordinary (perhaps extraordinary love) happen day-to-day.
As other reviewers have noted, you have to read awhile before you catch on. A Hasidic-murdered Santa Claus working for the Mossad mixed with a Welsh invasion of Argentina are hard to follow, but the stories do weave together if you are patient. While you are waiting for the mystery to unravel, you are well entertained by the Dr. Who-like silliness described in Aberystwyth.
Even the movie title book titles are a little abstract. Are they gimics or do they allude to the content? Even after reading all four I am still not sure.
In a literary world drab with overwraught themes, these books stand far apart for entertainment value, provocative thought, and tortuous plot evolution.
There are four of them published to date (more please), and you should read them in order as the characters recur in each book and are introduced sequentially. Although the characterization is best in the later books as Pryce gets going.
Simply put, they are zany. Pryce not only weaves fantasy into Wales (but remember that Arthurian tales emanate from nearby), but throws in Wittgensteinian metaphysics. As an aside, Druids control the Aberystwyth mafia. I certainly have no idea if his geography is accurate (see other reviews on this page), and I know that I did not recognize all the allusions, but he a much more profound writer than would be suggested. He provokes some pretty good questions about how we perceive one another and the extent to which fraternal love and ordinary (perhaps extraordinary love) happen day-to-day.
As other reviewers have noted, you have to read awhile before you catch on. A Hasidic-murdered Santa Claus working for the Mossad mixed with a Welsh invasion of Argentina are hard to follow, but the stories do weave together if you are patient. While you are waiting for the mystery to unravel, you are well entertained by the Dr. Who-like silliness described in Aberystwyth.
Even the movie title book titles are a little abstract. Are they gimics or do they allude to the content? Even after reading all four I am still not sure.
In a literary world drab with overwraught themes, these books stand far apart for entertainment value, provocative thought, and tortuous plot evolution.
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