Product Description

To the girls who came to make it big in the town's 'What the Butler Saw' movie industry, Aberystwyth was the town of broken dreams. To Dean Morgan who taught at the Faculty of Undertaking, it was just a place to get course materials. But both worlds collide when the Dean checks into the notorious bed and breakfast ghetto and mistakenly receives a suitcase intended for a ruthless druid assassin. Soon he is running for his life, lost in a dark labyrinth of druid speakeasies and toffee apple dens, where every spinning wheel tells the story of a broken heart, and where the Dean's own heart is hopelessly in thrall to a porn star known as Judy Juice.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14194 in Books
• Published on: 2009-02-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Review
'A sustained masterpiece of dark imagination I am already looking forward to future volumes in this marvellously surreal Welsh noir series' Daily Telegraph 'Combines Monty Python absurdity with tenderness for the twisted world of noir Add a clown, a brain in a box and an endearing gallery of grotesques and stir maliciously. Priceless' Guardian 'Pryce is in a league of his own effortless and hilarious Pryce's novels show disturbing signs of becoming a cult. If only Aberystwyth was really like this' Time Out

Sunday Times
One of the most inventively comic crime novels of recent years.

Irish Times
An impossible-to-synopsise comedy thriller... Buy it and laugh yourself sick!

Customer Reviews

more of the same but less
Having really enjoyed the first book in the series i approached 'Last Tango' with eagerness. Sadly it's proved to be a bit of a one joke novel. I think the idea of a Philip Marlowe character walking the streets of Aber is worth more development. Sadly the author has taken his character in the direction of the just plain ridiculous rather than the noir theme. Events in this novel get more and more fantastical moving the novel into a completely different category. I'm not sure which one but it's not the direction i hoped the novels would go in. If you're looking for a novel where anything can and does happen then you may enjoy this. If you're looking for a detective story with a different spin but essentially stays within the genre then this probably isn't for you.

Oh Happy Days...
Reading this book took me back over thirty years to my mis-spent youth as a student in Aberystwyth. Whilst the wider picture is fictitious (the town half-ruined after a bombed reservoir flooded down the hillside), the detail is just so authentic. The odd folk who frequented The Angel (I know, cos I wus there!), the ventriloquists with their dummies who frequented the upper reaches of Great Darkgate Street (yup, that's where the Students Union HQ was!), the apprentice thugs in the pubs around the station (yes - no student ever went near The Terminus, and lived), and the ladies of dubious repute in Welsh cozzies who frequent the Prom (I wish!! - the only kick I got on the Prom was The Bar!!). And, I have to say, the Welsh activists were prominent when I was there too - FFred FFrancis & Co. So, if you ever lived in Aber, this is the book for you, and if you didn't, it's still worth the pryce! Can't wait to read Aber Mon Amour, and then the next instalment...

Genuinely different, and very entertaining
Last Tango in Aberystwyth is a follow up novel to Pryce's first book, Aberystwyth Mon Amour, which was also about Aberystwyth's only Private Investigator, Louie Knight.

The book transposes the conventions of American noir fiction into the frankly bizarre setting of Aberystwyth, complete with maniacal druids, Professors of Undertaking, donkey farmers, and philosophical ice-cream salesmen.

It is quite silly, but manages to be entertaining rather than self-indulgent, and there is a decent detective story at the heart of the book, so it appeals to everybody. I laughed in the right places, and I was engrossed in the story, and if that's what you want from a book, then this will fulfil that.

However, I only gave it four stars for two reasons; firstly, I'd strongly advice you to read the first book, Aberstwyth Mon Amour, first, to get an idea of the main characters. Secondly, if you think the plot summary sounds silly, and you want something more serious, you may very well be put off by this. However, if you like Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Jasper Fforde, or even Raymond Chandler, you'll feel at home with this book.

Overall, this was a great read, short, funny, and a complete story. I'm not desperate to read it again immediately, but it is a rewarding book. I'd say buy it.