Book 28: "The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth" by Malcolm Pryce

Let the lamp affix its beam
The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.
Wallace Stevens
The third installment in the series about hapless detective Louie Knight. When his dying girlfriend Myfanwy is kidnapped on a day out from the nursing home, Louie is distraught and he and his friend Inspector Llunos of the Aberystwyth police turn the town upside down in their efforts to find her.

Book 4 in the series, "Don't Cry for me Aberystwyth", has just come out in hardback. Can I resist temptation and wait until for the paperback before buying it? Unlikely.

Book 29: "White Apples" by Jonathan Carroll

Vincent Ettrich died of liver cancer a month or so ago, but now he is alive again and no-one in his life seems to have noticed that he died, including him. It is only when he meets a friend of his called Bruno Mann who is also dead, and finds Bruno's name tattooed on his new girlfriend Coco's neck that he begins to realise that something strange is going on.

The plots of Jonathan Carroll's fantasy novels are always original, so you can never guess what is going to happen. It's just a pity that his protagonists are so unlikeable. I didn't really care about Vincent, and actively disliked Isabelle, his on-off girlfriend and the love of his life.