If you want something a little different, beautifully written and full of surprises, then this new crime series (this is the second) is for you. Starring a couple of wonderfully cantankerous old school detectives, Bryant and May, stumbling around in a fast-moving, modern world, they are the Met’s Peculiar Crime Unit which really says it all. I think he is great.

Comparison: Colin Dexter, Robert Goddard, John Harvey.
Similar this month: None but try Kate Ellis.

Synopsis

An oasis in the heart of Kentish Town, Balaklava Street is ripe for gentrification. But then the body of an elderly woman is found at No. 5. Her demise seems to have been peaceful but for the fact that her throat is full of river water…

For the Met’s Peculiar Crimes Unit, led by London’s longest-serving detectives, Arthur Bryant and John May, this curious death marks the beginning of a distinctly sinister investigation. And the new owner of No. 5 is understandably unsettled by the damp in the basement of her home, some particularly resilient spiders and the ghostly sound of rushing water. Unearthing hitherto undiscovered secrets, the two octogenarian policemen learn that, in a London filled with the rich, the poor and the dispossessed, there’s still something a desperate individual is willing to kill for. And kill again to protect. Armed only with their wits, their own idiosyncratic practices and a plentiful supply of boiled sweets, Bryant and May come face to face with madness, greed and revenge in a wickedly sinuous mystery that goes to the heart of every London home.

Reviews

'Atmospheric, hugely beguiling and as filled with tricks and sleights of hand as a magician’s sleeve...this is English gothic at its eccentric best; a combination of Ealing comedy and grand opera: witty, charismatic, occasionally touching and with a genuine power to thrill'
JOANNE HARRIS

'The striking gothic setting of London under fire proves fruitful ground for a bizarre dark comedy of an investigation...bawdy, unpredictable and at times hilarious, with a cast of wonderful grotesques'
Maxim Jakubowski GUARDIAN

‘An evocatively reverential tribute to the genre…the clash of temperaments between Bryant and May makes them great detectives’
Time Out

About the Author

Christopher Fowler is co-founder and co-creative director of Creative Partnership. He also writes novels, screenplays and short story collections, and has had over twenty books published to date. His story The Master Builder was a CBS movie starring Tippi Hendren. Another, Left Hand Drive, won Best British Short Film in 1993. Others have been published in Time Out, The Big Issue, the Independent On Sunday and the Mail On Sunday. He was the 1998 recipient of the BFS Best Short Story Of The Year for Wageslaves. His first novel, the bestseller Roofworld, has been developed as a film for producer Marc Samuelson. Subsequent novels include Darkest Day, Spanky, Psychoville (film rights owned by Jude Law and Sadie Frost), Soho Black, Calabash and the two Bryant & May mysteries, Full Dark House and The Water Room. More books by this author Author 'Like for Like' recommendation