Aberystwyth Mon Amour – Innocuity in its element, a novel so harmless, I needed to make up a new word to describe it....

I love Philip Pullman and Philip Pullman thinks this book is marvellous……Philip Pullman is wrong.

Mr Pullman is a master of the child-adult crossover market and, pertinently so, Aberystwyth Mon Amour screams juvenility. This child-adult game is hard to pull off, and especially hard to pull off well. I love Kate’s idea that Aberystwyth Mon Amour is a kind of Bugsy Malone lampoon, in fact I’d be rather impressed if a twist in that vain was thrown into the blend at the end. Sadly….

Anyhoot, it started well, in fact I actually underlined a few moments of promise within the first 50 pages or so. The pace was agreeable and the characters jovial; I LOVED Sospan and his layman philosophy and was extremely tickled by the thought of existentialist week at the ice-cream parlour – who else is dying to get their hands on a wafer of the absurd?

However I’m afraid the bottom line has to be that Aberystwyth Mon Amour is a pretty ropey pastiche that lacks the laconic wit and breakneck rhythm that drives a detective story of quality. Louie Knight certainly ain’t no Philip Marlowe – and no Philip Pullman can persuade me otherwise.

But its harmless – it questions nothing, it answers nothing, refutes nothing, avows nothing – and for me, my lack of drive to underline is a real mark of the innocuous.