Category: Christopher Fowler

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Christopher Fowler Mark Bailey

Review: Bryant & May: Hall of Mirrors by Christopher Fowler (2018)

Bryant & May: Hall of Mirrors by Christopher Fowler

 

Bryant & May: Hall of Mirrors by Christopher Fowler
Bryant & May: Hall of Mirrors by Christopher Fowler

Hardback: 400 pages

Published 22nd March 2018

Publisher: Doubleday

ISBN: 978- 0857523440

 

BRYANT & MAY: HALL OF MIRRORS is the fifteenth book about Arthur Bryant, John May and their Peculiar Crimes Unit.

 

We are back in time to 1969.

Ten guests are about to enjoy a country house weekend at Tavistock Hall including the young detectives Arthur Bryant and John May who are undercover and in disguise tasked with protecting Monty Hatton-Jones (a whistle-blower turning Queen’s evidence in a massive bribery trial).

 

The scene is set for what could be a perfect country house murder mystery, except that this particular get-together is nothing like a Golden Age classic. The good times are coming to an end with the house’s penniless, dope-smoking aristocrat owner intent on selling the estate (complete with his own hippy encampment) to a secretive millionaire.

The weekend has only just started when the millionaire goes missing and murder is on the cards with army manoeuvres closing the only access road. When a falling gargoyle fells another guest the two incognito detectives decide to place their future reputations on the line discovering that in Swinging Britain nothing is quite what it seems…

 

The dark humour that one expects of a Bryant & May novel is there with us seeing a much younger Bryant & May than we are used to (so we see a slightly less odd Arthur).

The realistic view of the swinging sixties gives a nice level of social commentary which combines with expected very intricate plot with lots of twists, turns and misdirections provides an excellent read.

 

Categories
Arnaldur Indridason Carlo Lucarelli Christopher Fowler Declan Burke Euro Crime Hakan Nesser Mark Bailey Nigel McCrery Peter James Peter Robinson Year-End Review

Year-End Review: 2011

Favourite Discovery of 2011

Absolutely the best thing that I have read this year is Carlo Lucarellis De Luca trilogy (Carte Blanche (Carta Bianca), The Damned Season (L’estate Torbida) and Via delle Oche ) – small delicately shaped morsels (the longest is 160 pages and all three together are shorter than your typical doorstop novel).

In the last days and aftermath of World War II Italy, the world of Commissario de Luca, a fundamentally good man driven by a desire for justice who is (and has been) forced by circumstance to work for people with evil in the hearts is, to my mind, one of the great creations of modern crime fiction. I have the award winning TV movie adaptions on my to-be-watched list for Christmas and can’t wait.

 

Best of 2011

Of the new releases in 2011 (either in paperback or hardback), I would recommend (not in any particular order)

  • Outrage by Arnaldur Indridason (the 9th book in the series but using Elinborg rather than Erlendur as the chief protagonist)
  • Bad Boy by Peter Robinson (the 19th Inspector Banks novel)
  • Dead Man’s Grip by Peter James (7th Detective Superintendent Roy Grace novel)
  • Bryant & May and The Memory of Blood by Christopher Fowler (9th book about Arthur Bryant, John May and the Peculiar Crimes Unit)
  • The Inspector and Silence by Hakan Nesser (5th Chief Inspector Van Veeteren book)
  • Scream by Nigel McCrery (3rd Chief Inspector Lapslie novel)
  • Down these Green Streets edited by Declan Burke(an anthology of essays and short stories on Irish crime fiction)

They reflect my liking for police procedurals.

 

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Adrian McKinty Cath Staincliffe Christopher Fowler Crime Fiction Edmund Crispin Euro Crime Helene Tursten Ian Rankin Jo Nesbø John Harvey Mark Bailey Martin Edwards Peter James Peter Robinson Reviews W J Burley Year-End Review

Year-End Review: 2012

Of the new releases in 2012 (either in paperback or hardback), I would strongly recommend (in alphabetical order by author as I don’t want to choose an order)

  • Fowler, Christopher – BRYANT & MAY AND THE INVISIBLE CODE (10th novel about Arthur Bryant, John May and the Peculiar Crimes Unit – another strong Bryant & May novel with a very intricate plot with lots of twists and turns; some new characters (some of which are almost fantastical) are introduced to set up for the future which he has got a 2 book deal for starting with BRYANT & MAY AND THE BLEEDING HEART).
  • James, Peter – NOT DEAD YET (8th Detective Superintendent Roy Grace novel)
  • Nesbo, Jo – THE BAT (the 1st Harry Hole novel chronologically – it was nice to see the back plot to the later novels explored in more depth)
  • Rankin, Ian – STANDING IN ANOTHER MAN’S GRAVE (Rebus is back – I read it in a day and loved it)
  • Robinson, Peter – BEFORE THE POISON (not a DCI Banks book but it takes the well-used idea of somebody becoming obsessed with solving a decades-old murder and executes it very well)

 

Other 2012 releases that had good points were

  • McKinty, Adrian – THE COLD COLD GROUND (the 1st Sean Duffy novel set in 1980s Northern Ireland; yes I am biased as I go past most of the places in this novel on my train to work every day but this is an assured police procedural in the main – the next book (I HEAR THE SIRENS IN THE STREET) is just out as I write and if it is just a tad better then that is one of my 2013 best reads sorted)
  • Staincliffe, Cath  – DEAD TO ME  (the 1st Scott and Bailey tie-in novel by Cath Staincliffe; yes this is a tv tie-on but it captures the characters and is compellingly written)
  • Tursten, Helene – NIGHT ROUNDS (the 4th Irene Huss novel; this is a good novel but I have seen the first 6 Swedish TV movie adaptions so I spoilt it for myself).
  • Wanner, Len – THE CRIME INTERVIEWS VOLUMES ONE AND TWO (These are available most easily for Kindles but if you like tartan noir, they are a good insight into how authors minds work as they have interviews with 19 crime writers between the two volumes)

 

‘Blasts from the past’ series reread or read for the first time in 2012 are

  • Crispin, Edmund – the Gervase Fen series (I re-read these in the Summer. They are whodunit novels with complex plots written in a humorous, literary style with references to English literature, poetry, and music; my favourites are THE MOVING TOYSHOP (1946) and FREQUENT HEARSES (1950) – it is a crying shame that Crispin went 25 years between the penultimate and the last novel in the series).
  • Burley, W J – the Wycliffe series (I remember the tv series with Jack Shepherd well and recently bought them on DVD but had never read the books; yes they are dated and even the later ones read like those written in the 1970s (they were 22 written from 1968 to 2000) but they are also tightly plotted concisely written books with a great sense of place and a complex main character)
  • Edwards, Martin – the Lake District Mystery series (these were a new read for me and as said elsewhere on the website these are very classy page turners with a good sense of history and the area it is set in – the English Lake District)
  • Harvey. John – the Charlie Resnick series (I am just over halfway through re-reading this quality police procedural series set in Nottingham in the late 1980s and 1990s in the main – the last one was published a decade later in 2008)

 

Again, they reflect in the main my liking for police procedurals.

Categories
Christopher Fowler Crime Fiction Euro Crime Mark Bailey Reviews

Review: Bryant and May and the Invisible Code by Christopher Fowler

Bryant and May and the Invisible Code by Christopher Fowler
Bryant and May and the Invisible Code by Christopher Fowler

Fowler, Christopher – ‘Bryant & May and The Invisible Code’
Hardback: 352 pages (Aug. 2012) Publisher: Doubleday ISBN: 0857520504

BRYANT & MAY AND THE INVISIBLE CODE is the tenth book about Arthur Bryant, John May and their Peculiar Crimes Unit of the Metropolitan Police.

BRYANT & MAY AND THE INVISIBLE CODE begins with two children playing a game called ‘Witch-Hunter’ – they place a curse on a young woman taking lunch in a church courtyard and wait for her to die. An hour later the woman is found dead inside St Bride’s Church – a building that no-one else has entered. Bryant & May want to investigate the case but are refused the chance as it is outside their jurisdiction and are instead hired by their greatest enemy who wants to find out why his wife has suddenly started behaving strangely – he is convinced that someone is trying to drive her insane as she has begun covering the mirrors in her apartment believing herself to be the victim of witchcraft. The members of the Peculiar Crimes Unit dig behind the city’s facades to expose a world of private clubs, hidden passages and covert loyalties; as they do so they realise that the case might not just end in disaster – it might also get everyone killed.

Unlike the last book, BRYANT & MAY AND THE MEMORY OF BLOOD, I feel that this is not a good place for a new reader to start as it ties up an awful lot of loose ends in the series. However, if you do wish to start here then there is some background information that you could gather the bare bones of what has gone before from but not the full nuance.

Overall this is another strong Bryant & May novel with a very intricate plot with lots of twists and turns. Some new characters are introduced to set up for the future some of which are almost half fantastical.

Bryant, May and the Peculiar Crimes Unit will return in a graphic novel – THE CASEBOOK OF BRYANT & MAY – and may return in a novel if the publishing gods are willing – his blog says two more are outlined but not yet contracted.

Mark Bailey, Northern Ireland
September 2012

Originally published at EuroCrime

Categories
Christopher Fowler Crime Fiction Euro Crime Mark Bailey Reviews

Review: Bryant & May and The Memory of Blood by Christopher Fowler

Bryant & May and The Memory of Blood by Christopher Fowler

Hardback: 350 pages (September 2011)

Publisher: Doubleday ISBN: 9780857520494

11804800

 

BRYANT & MAY AND THE MEMORY OF BLOOD is the ninth book about Arthur Bryant, John May and their Peculiar Crimes Unit of the Metropolitan Police.

 

BRYANT & MAY AND THE MEMORY OF BLOOD begins with some scene setting chapters to settle new readers in before the first murder occurs – Robert Kramer, ruthless property developer turned theatre impresario, is throwing a party in his new penthouse just off Trafalgar Square (London is effectively a character in Bryant & May novels and undoubtedly Christopher Fowler is strong on characterisation). The air at the party is uncomfortable and full of foreboding and when Kramer’s young wife checks on their baby boy, she finds the nursery door locked from the inside. When the door is broken open, the Kramers are faced with an open window, an empty cot, and a grotesque antique puppet of Mr Punch lying on the floor.

 

This is another strong Bryant & May novel from Christopher Fowler with the usual intricate plot full of both twists and turns and strong characters who are nine-tenths believable and one-tenth fantastical.

 

For the benefit of new readers, the author does include a short briefing report on the members of the Peculiar Crimes Unit and the history of the unit at the start of the novel but other reviews I have seen by newcomers to the series suggest that this (perhaps more than others) can be enjoyed without having read the rest of the series.

 

One question that might occur to the prospective reader is how Christopher Fowler compares in an increasingly crowded field of fantasy detective stories such as Jasper Ffordes Thursday Next novels and Ben Aaronovitchs Grant and Nightingale novels (also working for the Metropolitan Police in the Economic and Specialist Crime Unit). The answer, I think, is still very well.

This is a not a new field with fantasy having been mixed with private eyes (e.g. Tanya Huffs Vicki Nelson, Mike Resnick’s John Justin Mallory and Malcolm Prices Louie Knight) and police procedurals (e.g. Terry Pratchetts Samuel Vimes) in recent years whilst the notion of occult detectives has been around since the late nineteenth century such as with William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki, the Ghost Finder from 1910 onwards.

 

Bryant, May and the Peculiar Crimes Unit will return in BRYANT & MAY AND THE INVISIBLE CODE which the author describes as having “a plot that operates both as a single case, but completes an arc that has been continuing for the last four books, taking it to a new point in the story.” My preorder is already in for holiday reading next summer.

This review originally appeared at Euro Crime