Malcolm Pryce
Malcolm Pryce is a British author, mostly known for his noir detective novels.
Born in Shrewsbury, England, Pryce moved at the age of nine to Aberystwyth, where he later attended Penglais Comprehensive School before leaving to do some travelling. After working in a variety of jobs. including BMW assembly-line worker in Germany, hotel washer-up, "the world's worst aluminium salesman", and deck hand on a yacht in Polynesia, Pryce became an advertising copywriter in London and Singapore. He is currently resident in Oxford.
Pryce writes in the style of Raymond Chandler, but his novels are incongruously set on the rainswept streets of an alternate universe version of the Welsh seaside resort and university town of Aberystwyth. The hero of the novels is Louie Knight, the best private detective in Aberystwyth (also the only private detective in Aberystwyth), who battles crime organised by the local Druids, investigates the strange case of the town's disappearing youths, and gets involved in its burgeoning film industry, which produces What The Butler Saw movies.
“It was partly the buzz you get at any big fight but also there was the build-up of static brought on by the rustling of pacamacs, and which had on occasion, so they said, given rise to the appearance of ball-lightning at these events.”
“That's the trouble with people like you, Knight, you only know how to mock. How to break things. You don't know how to create anything. You never did.”
“The train slowed down at the approach to shrewsbury station and glided between the eleventh-century abbey and the stadium of shrewsbury town football club. Two sacred arenas where men chanted and waited for a miracle that never came.”