If the master of locked room mysteries in the 1920s through1950s was John Dickson Carr, his clear successor today is Christopher Fowler, and his mad, mad series of novels about London’s Peculiar Crimes Unit, set up to deal with the odd cases, the ones normal detection methods can’t handle. The aging detectives are Arthur Bryant and John May. Bryant is an enthusiast of offbeat approaches and arcane historical knowledge, especially about his beloved London. May, his rational counterpart, pulls Arthur back on track whenever he’s goes too far off the rails. They’re assisted by a team of office mates who don’t understand Arthur but love and trust him. Included in the group is May’s granddaughter, April who is (1) agoraphobic, (2) untrained in any police or detective work but (3) really really good at finding things the other detectives need to know. That should give you some idea what the rest of the team is like. They’re more conventional than Arthur, but maybe less so than John, and they too are distinct individuals, each with his or her own quirks.
Here’s a handful of details, all from this book but symptomatic of what you can find in any of the fifteen? sixteen? Bryant and May tales so far in print. May describes the kind of people Bryant presses into service to help solve cases: “pollen readers and water diviners and eco-warriors, the mentally estranged, socially disenfranchised, delusional, disturbed and merely very odd people.”
Early in this installment, Bryant becomes concerned about loss of memory, and following his landlady’s advice, he consults “KISKAYA MANDEVILLE / Herbal Remedies --- Organic Therapies ---Hypnotism --- Sofas Repaired.”
Why did his landlady recommend her? “She cured the late Mr. Sorrowbridge’s smoking habit, and replaced the springs in his ottoman.”
Mme. Mandeville puts him on a diet to boost his memory. Bryant describes it: “Tomato juice, Worcestershire sauce, crushed celery, beetroot and horseradish sauce, … No vodka, sadly. …I have to drink three different kinds of fish oil tonight. My poor bowels will be positively peristaltic.”
A persistent strain of nostalgia infuses all the novels, a longing for things and practices lost in the transition from Old London to New: “nurses’ hats, single railway compartments, quality umbrellas…” Then Bryant swerves into the realm of manners: “The concept of public embarrassment, correct pronunciation and the ability to tell a child off in the street without risking a stab-wound.”
In this installment, middle-aged women are being killed in pubs. Arthur happens to sees one of them, in front of a pub, the Victoria Cross. Only in chapter ten, 67 pages into the story, does the Victoria come back into picture again. Arthur and John are examining the corpse of the woman whom Arthur saw and they realize –soon, everyone knows—that the Victoria Cross doesn’t exist anymore. Arthur has discovered a vanished murder site.
Thus starts the hunt, first to find the killer –who, why, how. It entails, as part of the quest, a set of chapters in which each of the members of the Peculiar Crimes Unit visits a separate pub with hilarious results –stiff-backed Detective Constable Meera Mangeshkar ends up doing the Texan line dance and comes back to the unit “wearing a suede fringed jacket with THE KING LIVES written across it in red, white and blue sequins.” They eventually catch the murderer and it is clear he’s the one who committed them. But though everyone else is content, Arthur isn’t. He needs to suss out who planted the seed in the murderer’s mind and who directed him to these particular prey -and why. It’s all eventually resolved, why the Victoria Cross pub was there but wasn’t there.
How did I feel about it? It was a novel of glorious first and middle parts, all the way through the hunt for the proximate killer. After that, it was over-tricky, suffering from the same defects as the John Dickson Carr locked door mysteries. It wasn’t that the explanation for what had happened didn’t parse, but it was overly complicated. It didn’t meet the test of Occam’s razor. But hey! it was a glorious ride getting there, with lots of laughs en route and no lapse of attention, and I cared about the characters involved. Four out of five ain’t bad.
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Another fine mess for May and Bryant and the whole PCU ...
Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2015
Another fine mess for May and Bryant and the whole PCU gang. As always, I read this at the computer, so that I could look up terms, maps, and photos. Included here is a photo of the Seven Stars Pub cat, wearing a Victoria collar. There are several online sites that offer insight into British pub names, as well. A Bryant and May mystery invites the reader into the geography and life of London past and present; this is a significant part of Fowler's magic.
Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2015
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Top reviews from other countries
Mark Pack
A disappearing pub is the spark for another enjoyable Bryant & May mystery
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 21, 2011theTramp
London history with a bit of fiction wrapped around it
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 24, 2013
D. M. Dickson
Still enjoying them after 6 none stop.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 22, 2013
