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. (Sort of like if Mulder and Scully had been through WWII and are now trying to adapt to the modern day of computers and cell phones).I know that British vs American mysteries have a different take on things. In England they don’t mind if you take a little time to get into the story and in America if five people aren’t dead by the end of page three, people are annoyed. I don’t mind a slower start, I really don’t. That said, you could have loped off the first 40-50 pages of this book and lost nothing. Mostly it’s about their boss trying to close the unit down (a trope I’m SO tired of), of May getting his agoraphobic granddaughter out of the house to work for the unit and Bryant failing spectacularly to connect to today’s high school students. Frankly, I know you’re supposed to show not tell but I’d rather have had been told these things in a few sentences (since it is important info but drawn out WAY too long) and got on with the story.The mystery itself, when we spend any time with it, is actually interesting. Someone is killing B list celebrities, ones that have taken their fame, begun to fall from grace or are out rightly amoral. The first to die is an artist whose art seems to be more about her sex life than anything else (like releasing illicitly made sex tapes). She’s drowned in her art exhibit, a huge vat of formaldehyde where fake fetuses bob around supporting pro-choice in the abortion debate. The only witness saw a man in a Highway man’s outfit throw her in.As we go along more celebrities die, in weird ways, that seem almost accidentally but the highwayman is there, sometimes almost in two places at once. This part is actually pretty good. But we take too many side trips. We have the whole closing of the unit melodrama which was so by the book, seen it a hundred times that I skipped over most of it. Oddly much of it hinged on a failure back in the 1970’s and I had issue with that being such a big deal 30 years later (but there are reasons for it that will give away the ending so…) Then we have tensions between Bryant and May, May and his granddaughter and tensions between the wealthy private school (where the first witnesses to the crime attend and where Bryant failed in his speech) and the projects that grew up around the school. It took me much longer than anticipated to read this since my attention kept wandering. It’s not the dullest in the series but it’s not the most exciting either. If some of the subplots were trimmed out (and since I’m reading out of order I knew how some of them turned out anyhow) this would have been a better read. The ending…let’s just say I had issues with it.
Ten-Second Staircase is another cracking read from the pen of Christopher Fowler and featuring the superb pairing of Arthur Bryant and John May, the elderly founders of the Peculiar Crimes Unit (which always lives up to its name). It features some very peculiar crimes indeed (an artist drowned in her own installation) as well as some just horribly brutal ones as well. Aside from the main crime that they have to solve in this book they are also thrown back into a previously unsolved case from the nineteen seventies which had often been mentioned in the previous books as one that got away from them despite their best efforts at the time and they also have to do this with the home office threatening to close the unit down as they are not impressed with the methods of the unit, which are not standard policing methods. Of course that is what makes these books so interesting to read as they don’t play by the rules, but usually get the right results and it is great fun seeing them get into scrapes of their own making and rooting for them all the way to get out of the scrape and go and catch the bad guy or girl. The story in this book was reasonably complex (but not as complex as some of the others in the seris have been) and kept me guessing right until the end when I realised that the person that I had been suspecting cannot have been the culprit. Once again all of the regular characters of the PCU shone out amongst the dramatis personae in the book even amongst the myriad of possible suspects and the murder victims themselves and you find yourself really wanting them to get the job done and angry at the people who are trying to stop them doing what they do best. In fact though Bryant and May are easily the best characters in the books I do have a soft spot for Janice Longbright a woman who manages to keep the unit going almost singlehandedly and who is also a fascinating character with a fixation on looking and acting like a 1950s glamour puss as well as being a thoroughly capable police officer and an excellent ally for Bryant and May to have. I have really been enjoying this book and look forward to reading more of the PCU adventures.
Christopher Fowler has a spectacular eye for labyrinthine Gothic absurdity, and when he turned it to the police procedural he conjured up Bryant and May, octogenarian detectives dealing with London’s most peculiar crimes, the ones that attract attention, instil fear and panic and turn on a form of perverse celebrity. In their fourth outing, we find minor celebrity as the target, fame as the goal, London’s psycho-geography as the weapon in a caper linking vampires, highwaymen, the Knights Templar and more than one serial killer, wrapped up in a story featuring bureaucratic ambition, tabloid aggrandisement, class difference and ennui. As always, Fowler is entertaining with an ability to make the impossible mundane. I think, though, I would have appreciated just a little more of the arcane.
—Malcolm
In this fourth installment involving London's Peculiar Crimes Unit, especially the unit's two elderly icons, Arthur Bryant and John May, the team is fighting for their literal lives as higher-ups plot to close the unit down. Unconventional methods and scads of broken rules and laws are frequently employed by Bryant and May, although their younger co-workers tend to do things a little more conventionally. A controversial artist is murdered right in her own display--fetuses floating in a tank of chemicals--and was reported by one of the children visiting the museum to have been thrown into the tank by a man on horseback wearing a historical costume. Obviously a job for the PCU, especially when The Highwayman (as he comes to be called) kills several more times and leaves them obscure clues until the bunch of them working together manage to piece them together and solve the crimes, as well as an old cold case from earlier in their career that's plagued them for many years. I love this group of eccentric detectives! They all work a little differently, Bryant relying frequently on intuitive reasoning and May taking the more logical, deductive approach. The other members of the group, although featured in less detail, support them well. The mysteries are interesting and bizarre, and there are often ties to historical elements that lead you to learning a lot of cool things without realizing you're doing so. A wild, rollicking, unorthodox trek across London and across time with plenty of laughs and some very poignant moments as well--very enjoyable as always.
—Spuddie
"That's what happens when you get older: You become irritated by the views of others for the simple reason that you know better, and they're being ridiculous. If I go to a public debate, some silly man will stand up and start complaining about police brutality until I want to beat him to death with my stick" (35)."England has the most contemporary spiritual landscape in Europe. Why not make the most of it? Continuity has been fractured, leaving a spiritual vacuum. The meaningful aesthetics of family and religion have fallen by the wayside. We have tribalisms, but no belief system against which we can measure ourselves. And just when we're free to reinvent ourselves on this wonderful blank canvas, to finally prove responsible for our own destinies, international corporations are busy trying to fill the void. What could be more grotesque than companies behaving like vengeful deities by copyrighting the genetic code, or stopping seeds from reproducing? So someone must remain behind to remember the past, and I've appointed myself for the task. Do you want tea?" (186)
—Lucy
