If Chandler was from Aberystwyth...

That's Raymond Chandler, creator of Marlowe the archetypal wise-cracking private detective, not Chandler the archetypal slightly gay flat-mate. Just to get that clear from the outset. If he was from the aforementioned Welsh seaside town he might have come up instead with Louie Knight, noir comic spy creation of Malcolm Pryce, author of the book I'm reading at the moment - Last Tango In Aberystwyth. (This is the second book in the series - Aberystwyth Mon Amour precedes it, and the third is The Unbearable Lightness Of Being In Aberystwyth. I've just discovered that there is now a fourth - Don't Cry For Me Aberystwyth. Had to happen). Here's a pretty decent official website where you can learn more, and there's an entry here in Wikipedia.

If you haven't yet, I urge you to make a bee-line for the nearest copy of one of these books. The idea of transposing Marlowe to a surreal version of Aberystwyth, a world of ice-cream cones, druids and "girls who come to make it big in the 'What The Butler Saw' industry" could so easily be a terrible failure. But this is a triumph. Louie Knight has Marlowe's deadpan-ness, but more. He clearly wants on some subliminal level to be detecting in the stomping ground of Marlowe himself, the world of the real gumshoe; yet equally plainly, he is fiercely rooted in Aberystwyth. The writing is immaculate - where else could you come across lines such as "This was also the time when the Chief of Police had to confiscate a lot of large-print pornography" and "When you work as a private eye in Aberystwyth you learn not to worry too much where your hunches come from"?

What are you waiting for? Go read!