With their special Peculiar Crimes Unit shut down, mostly because of budget cuts, Detective Arthur Bryant is feeling withdrawn and depressed, while his partner, John May, is
considering taking on work as a private investigator. May is the more affable of this pair, while the socially inept Bryant takes every opportunity to anger his bosses at the Yard. When a former team member stumbles on a beheaded corpse in London’s King’s Cross neighborhood, May uses the discovery to gain the unit a brief new lease on life. He persuades the higher-ups that unsolved gang crimes in the area could threaten the economic benefit anticipated from the 2012 Summer Olympics. Given one week to solve the case, without any official sanction or access to police resources, May pulls Bryant out of his doldrums and reassembles the unit. To May’s dismay, his colleague is more interested in reports that a man wearing a stag’s head has been seen in the area.Issued in tandem with Bryant & May on the Loose is the paperback edition of The Victoria Vanishes (Bantam), my favorite book in this under-appreciated series, first published last year. In that story, Bryant watches a popular pub disappear during the course of his chasing after a serial killer who preys on middle-age women in London’s most popular watering holes. He and May discover a connection between the victims, but the most critical clues, it turns out, are embedded in the histories of the saloons themselves (including the long-gone Victoria Cross, where Bryant swears he saw one of the victims just moments before her death).
Fowler’s Bryant and May series comprises seven novels so far, including 2003’s much-lauded Full Dark House. If anyone can keep these two grand geezers alive, it’s their British creator. Let’s all keep our fingers crossed ...
READ MORE: “Golden Years of Detection,” by Sarah Weinman
(The Barnes & Noble Review).
4 comments:
As always, you expand my book wishlist...Where do you find such interesting reads?
Michele
SouthernCityMysteries
There's one more still under contract, I think, but I sure hope we haven't seen the last of these fine gents!
I would love to include the January Mag. link you have at the bottom of your blog, on my blog. Where would I find the widget? I think the mag. is great, and would hope to pass the word along through my blog as well.
Michele
SouthernCityMysteries
It IS a wonderful series, I hope someway Fowler recants - or his publisher does - and we can continue to read the cases of these most unusual and endearing pair. Fingers crossed!
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