Volume 7 in the Peculiar Crimes Unit series which stretches at this time to 10 volumes. Following the closure ofcthe PCU due to a beaurocratic loophole, the volume starts with the team scattered and Arthur practically a bed bound recluse but following the discovery of a headless corpse and sighti...
This book was fun to read and was a perfect palate cleanser after my last heavy literary meal. I loved the author's bubbly style:"Arthur Bryant: Have you met him before? If not, imagine a tortoise minus its shell, thrust upright and stuffed into a dreadful suit. Give it glasses, false teeth and a...
Just Finished (54) The Memory of Blood: A Peculiar Crimes Unit Mystery. It's always a joy to read another in this series of oddball mysteries. Arthur Bryant and John May started the Peculiar Crimes Unit during World War II, and despite their age, continue to investigate cases that are unusual in ...
A difficult book to read on some levels, a child's death is not what one would really regard as entertainment and in fact I did think that it was handled quite coldly. Having said that (and it wasn't in any way offensive) Bryant dealt with it the way that he deals with all death, a crime that mu...
One of the best in this series. Punch and Judy themed murders this time, with another theatrical setting for Bryant and May to roam around. A big 'be warned' for those easily offended is that the initial death involves a child. However, fans of Fowler's PCU will enjoy every twist and turn and Bry...
Bryant and May never disappoint; I stayed up late last night to finish this one, the tension really builds in the end and even though I was sure I knew the culprit. I wasn't sure the PCU would get their man - and then I was totally gobsmacked with the twist Fowler throws at us, bravo! I love this...
I have never read anything from this author, or on this series, but decided to give it a try. The characters were very quirky, a box of cats and growing marijuana under ones desk for example. The story was interesting, I liked the way it came together at the end. I didn't really care about the ch...
This is an interesting story which chronicles the first case of the Peculiar Crimes Unit. It takes place in 1973. Arthur Bryant and John May had been partners some time ago and they are now reunited as the PCU is given it's first quarters away from the Metropolitan Police as well as a small grou...
It takes a lot of skill, if not a lot of nerve, for an author to set up a book seemingly about the exploits of a crime detective duo and apparently kill one of them off on the first page.But that’s what happens here. In present day London, an incendiary device is set off in the office of London M...
When Christopher Fowler announced that he was to write a series of books based around his repeating characters, Detectives Bryant and May of the Metropolitan Police's Peculiar Crimes Unit, I was initially quite excited. A couple of books later, however, I was less enthusiastic. "Full Dark House",...
A strange story - but I rather liked it. John May and Arthur Bryant are the head of the Peculiar Crimes Unit. They are a relatively obscure unit in London, dealing with the obscure crimes very few know about. They are both aging and are afraid the unit will be closed when they are gone. Their...
This was an incredibly impressive short story collection. I have only read one or two stories by Fowler before and watched a very average film adaptation of one, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but I was fascinated by the author that writes urban horror. In the genre overpopulated with "a ...
When the Amazon order containing this book turned up, I couldn’t help but be a little disappointed by the contents. Sure, it was everything I’d ordered, including two books by one of my favourite authors, Christopher Fowler. One of these was the cause of my disappointment. Not for the contents, b...
I’m beginning to think the very first book in this series (which I’m sadly reading out of order) was the best. All of the books center on May and Bryant, two close to retiring (in age if not in desire) detectives of London’s Peculiar Crimes Unit, i.e. the weird stuff that no one else wants to do...
New York, New York This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2008...
‘Raymondo, is that you? What are you doing here?’ It being a Saturday, Raymond Land was attired in civvy clothes, which consisted of the kind of trousers one saw advertised in the backs of local newspapers, and a Marks & Spencer’s shirt that would have looked unfashionable on Denis Thatcher. ...
Someone had to keep an eye on him.May peered around the door of his partner’s office and watched Bryant knocking the contents of his pipe into the brainpan of the Tibetan skull on his desk. Half of the bookcase had been emptied, and two immense stacks towered on either side of the desk, framing t...
Never read Dickens when you’re in a state of alarm, it doesn’t go in. Having glimpsed something of a city I’d ignored for so long, I now felt restless indoors and wanted to see more, but I could tell by the unnatural flatness of the river that it had started to rain. From the window at the end of...
As a rainstorm of apocalyptic proportions broke, the two Daves went running for buckets, knowing that the downpour would expose a number of flaws in their window repairs. ‘Well, if it isn’t James Bond,’ said Janice Longbright as Fraternity dripped all over her desk. ‘Do you want me to give you a ...
Bryant did so, then called his partner John May with instructions to meet him at 10:15am beside a bus stop in Marble Arch, but with no explanation as to why. It was muggy, grey and wet, not at all appropriate to the festive season, and May resented being dragged away from the PCU’s offices. ...
After eight hundred years it’s still the home of the City of London Corporation, the powerhouse at the heart of the world’s leading financial centre. ‘I search the room and see a great many youthful faces. At my age, everyone is youthful. Some of you look positively prepubescent. So, as the most ...
He seemed to live on packet meals and alcohol. She counted three whisky bottles. Right at the bottom, unfortunately soaked in tea and orange juice, she found some pages torn in quarters. He’d printed out photographs onto ordinary A4 stationary, so the quality was poor. She tried piecing them toge...
In the 1980s they received a disastrous cosmetic makeover. Ignoring the fact that the system was coming apart at the seams, lavish artworks were commissioned and left unfinished, stations were closed instead of being repaired, and only a handful of the oldest remained unspoiled. Russell Square wa...
The niches had been designed to hold statues, but the Midland Railway had baulked at the extra expense, so they had remained empty. Here, at the hotel which prefaced the station, Venetian High Gothic met the beginnings of the Aesthetic Movement, the whole edifice looking down on the surrounding a...
Its contents were sealed beneath a cowl of clear plastic, designed to prevent contamination of evidence. ‘His body was found over there by his landlady and was taken straight to University College Hospital. The last time anyone saw him was Christmas Eve, four days ago. The doctors want to know if...
So many passengers were dying of the virulent plague, which aged their bones and rotted their skin. They lay collapsed in their own blood, their eyes vanished. The very air grew miasmic and foul, the nightmarish scene sweetly reeking of contagion. It seemed obvious to him now that everyone on the...
I was eleven, a new boy in a class of hostile, suspicious pupils. I wanted to have a black friend because I only knew white kids, but the only black boy in the entire school was a geek called Jeremy who longed to be a Young Conservative. English children of the period knew no one other than those...
‘We’re not a burns unit,’ he complained, leading Dan Banbury back to the autopsy room. ‘I’m not really equipped to deal with this. Fire examination’s a pretty intricate discipline.’ ‘I know a bit about it,’ said Banbury. ‘There was a fire officer named Carter at the Weeks site. She’s offered to p...
There was one other noteworthy item, a column entitled ‘Places Of Interest’, which gave a capsule description of the Hyperion Observatory, noting that it was privately owned and not open to the public. ‘The house owes its unusual symmetrical shape to the fact that it was once an observatory. It...