Product Description

It's Christmas in Aberystwyth and a man wearing a red-and-white robe is found brutally murdered in a Chinatown alley. A single word is scrawled in his blood on the pavement: 'Hoffmann'. But who is Hoffmann? This time, Aberystwyth's celebrated crime-fighter, Louie Knight, finds himself caught up in a brilliant pastiche of a cold-war spy thriller. From Patagonia to Aberystwyth, Louie trails a legendary stolen document said to contain an astonishing revelation about the ultimate fate of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but he's not the only one who wants it. A bewildering array of silver-haired spies has descended on Aberystwyth, all lured out of retirement by one tantalising rumour: Hoffmann has come in from the Cold. Louie Knight, who still hasn't wrapped up his presents, just wishes he could have waited until after the holiday.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24934 in Books
• Published on: 2009-02-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Review
'Hilarious' Daily Telegraph 'Malcolm Pryce is the king of Welsh noir Edgar Allan Poe meets Phoenix Nights in a flurry of blood-stained absurdity' Sunday Telegraph 'Inventive, funny and dark, Pryce packs more style into a sentence than most authors could hope for in volumes' Big Issue 'Pryce really is in a league of his own. If only Aberystwyth really was like this' Time Out

Sunday Telegraph
`Another wonderfully silly fantasy ... the old magic is alive and well'

South Wales Argus
`Pryce delivers a book that is every bit as witty, scathing and fiendishly plotted as its predecessors'

Customer Reviews

O' little town of Aberystwyth!
A Christmas setting for Louie Knight this time, but there's not much "comfort and joy" in Aberystwyth. A man in a Santa Claus suit has been viciously murdered and his body left in a state that wouldn't be out of place in the Da Vinci Code!! I loved its absurdity and fabulously descriptive writing, as I did with the other "Aberystwyth" novels, but I found this one much more reflective, a little darker and to be honest, much sadder, as many more brutal and needless killings occur. Of all four books, I think this one deserves the genre description "noir" the most. Very inventive and joyously ridiculous in parts, but not as many laughs this time, and some unfinished business - is the pin still in Mrs Llantrisant's photo?

Noir Rarebit
As the other reviewer pointed out, probably the darkest of the four books, but not without great comedy moments. Answers the question of what Welsh hitmen should look like, and worth price of admission for that alone. Confusing from beginning to end, but that is after all the mark of a good noir detective story. Enjoy.

Don't Laugh For Me Aberystwyth
When you look at the ingredients of this book - dead Santas, Nazi hunters, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the Welsh Secret Service - you'd be forgiven for assuming it to be a deranged work of bewildering surrealism. Malcolm Pryce, however, has the knack of making the bizarre seem believable - the oddness never hinders the plot and thus you're left with a genuinely gripping and inventive thriller populated with some undeniably unusual yet never ludicrous characters.

Much of the success of this series is down to Pryce's prose which is brilliantly evocative and leaves many better-known writers in the shade. In an ideal world Pryce would be as big as Pratchett.

One niggle - the Louie Knight books are promoted as comedies (the jacket describes this one as "hilarious") but they've never been over-burdened with laughs and, as other reviewers have mentioned, this volume is darker still. A little less introspection and a few more laughs would be nice next time.