Bryant & May Series by Christopher Fowler
Bryant & May #1
Bryant & May 01; Full Dark House b&m-1
Christopher Fowler
The first novel of the Bryant and May mysteries, in which the two detectives, Arthur Bryant and John May, are members of the fictional Peculiar Crimes Unit. _________________________ When a bomb devastates the office of London’s most unusual police unit and claims the life of Arthur Bryant, his partner John May searches for clues to the bomber’s identity. Before long he is on the trail through Blitz-ravaged London and the gothic world of the theatre.
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Bryant & May #3
Bryant & May 03; Seventy-Seven Clocks b&m-3
Christopher Fowler
“The newspapers referred to it as the case of the seventy seven clocks. There was quite a fuss at the time. We got into terrible trouble. Dear fellow, it was one of our most truly peculiar cases. I remember as if it was yesterday.” In fact, Arthur Bryant remembers very little about yesterday, but he does remember the oddest investigation of his career…It was late in 1973. As strikes and blackouts ravaged the country during Edward Heath’s ‘Winter of Discontent’, sundry members of a wealthy, aristocratic family were being disposed of in a variety of grotesque ways – by reptile, by bomb, by haircut. As the hours of daylight diminish towards Christmas, Bryant & May, the irascible detectives of London’s controversial Peculiar Crimes Unit, know that time is the key – and time is running out for both the family and the police. Their investigations lead them into a hidden world of class conflict, craftsmanship and the secret loyalties of big business. But what have seventy seven ticking clocks to do with it? Now the full story can at last be revealed, in this most eerie of adventures that features Arthur Bryant at his rudest, John May at his most exasperated and a gallery of colourful, bizarre characters who could only make their home in a city like London.
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Bryant & May #4
Bryant & May 04; Ten Second Staircase b&m-4
Christopher Fowler
It’s a crime tailor-made for the Peculiar Crimes Unit: a controversial artist is murdered and displayed as part of her own outrageous installation. No suspects, no motive, no evidence – it’s business as usual for the Unit’s cantankerous founding partners, Arthur Bryant and John May. But this time they have an eyewitness. According to twelve-year-old Luke Tripp, the killer was a cape-clad highwayman atop a black stallion.
As implausible as the boy’s story sounds, Bryant and May take it seriously when ‘The Highwayman’ is spotted again, striking a dramatic pose at the scene of his next outlandish murder. Whatever the killer’s real identity, he seems intent on killing off a string of minor celebrities while becoming one himself.
As the tabloids look to make a quick bundle on “Highwayman Fever”, Bryant and May, along with the newest member of the Unit, May’s agoraphobic granddaughter, April, find themselves sorting out a case involving an unlikely combination of artistic rivalries, sleazy sex affairs, the Knights Templars, and street gang feuds. To do it, they’re going to have to use every orthodox – and unorthodox – means at their disposal, including myth, witchcraft, and the psycho-geographic history of the city’s “monsters”, past and present.
And if one unsolvable crime weren’t enough, this case has disturbing links to a decades-old killing spree that nearly destroyed the partnership of Bryant and May once before…and may again. The Peculiar Crimes Unit is one murder away from being closed down for good – and that murder could be their own.
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Bryant & May #6
Bryant & May 06; The Victoria Vanishes b&m-6
Christopher Fowler
One night, Arthur Bryant witnesses a drunk middle-aged lady coming out of a pub in a London backstreet. The next morning, she is found dead at the exact spot where their paths crossed. Even more disturbing, there’s a twist: the pub has vanished and the street itself has changed. Bryant is convinced that he saw them as they looked over a century before, but the elderly detective has already lost the funeral urn of an old friend. Could he be losing his mind as well? Then it becomes clear that a number of women have met their ends in London pubs. It seems a silent, secret killer is at work, striking in full view…and yet nobody has a clue how, or why – or where he’ll attack next. The likeliest suspect seems to be a mental patient with a reason for killing. But knowing who the killer is and catching him are two very different propositions. As their new team at the Peculiar Crimes Unit goes in search of a madman, the octogenarian detectives ready themselves for the pub crawl of a lifetime, and come face to face with their own mortality…
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Bryant & May #7
Bryant & May 07; Bryant & May on the Loose b&m-7
Christopher Fowler
The Peculiar Crimes Unit is no more. After years of defying the odds and infuriating their embarrassed superiors, detectives Arthur Bryant and John May have at last crossed the line. This is the twenty-first century and not even their eccentric genius or phenomenal success rate solving London’s most unusual crimes can save them. While Bryant takes to his bed, his bathrobe, and his esoteric books, the rest of the team take to the streets looking for new careers – leading one of them to stumble upon a gruesome murder.
It isn’t so much the discovery of the headless corpse that’s potentially so politically explosive as where it’s found. Still it takes the bizarre sightings of a great horned creature – half man, half stag – carrying off young women to convince Bryant that this is a case worth getting dressed and leaving the house to solve. The Home Office has reluctantly authorized the PCU to reunite for one last encore performance – in a rented office with no computer network, no legal authority, and a broken toilet. They’ve got until the end of the week to solve a murder with unlikely links to gangland crime, Slavic mythology, the 2012 London Olympics, and the sort of corruption only obscene amounts of money and power can buy.
It’s the kind of case that Bryant and May live to solve – and it could be just the case that kills them.
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Bryant & May #8
Bryant & May 08; Off the Rails b&m-8
Christopher Fowler
They’ve been given just one week to find a killer they’d caught once before…Arthur Bryant, John May and the Peculiar Crimes Unit are on the trail of an enigma: a young man called Mr Fox. But his identity is false, his links to society are invisible and his home yields no clues. All they know is that somehow he escaped from a locked room and murdered one of their best and brightest. Now the detectives are being lured down into the darkest recesses of the London Underground where their quarry, expertly disguised, has struck again. Their search takes them into the vast labyrinth of tunnels, a subterranean world full of legends and ghost stations, which tie the city together. Edging closer to what lies hidden beneath the city – and to the madness that is driving a man to murder – Bryant and May are about to uncover a mystery as bizarre as anything they have ever encountered…
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Bryant & May #9
Bryant & May 09; The Memory of Blood b&m-9
Christopher Fowler
The indomitable duo of Arthur Bryant and John May, along with the rest of their quirky team, return to solve a confounding case with dark ties to the British theater and a killer who may mean curtains for all involved. For the crew of the New Strand Theatre, the play The Two Murderers seems less performance than prophecy when a cast party ends in the shocking death of the theater owner’s son. The crime scene is most unusual, even for Bryant and May. In a locked bedroom without any trace of fingerprints or blood, the only sign of disturbance is a gruesome life-size puppet of Mr. Punch laying on the floor. Everyone at the party is a suspect, including the corrupt producer, the rakish male lead, the dour set designer, and the assistant stage manager, who is the wild daughter of a prominent government official.
It’s this last fact that threatens the Peculiar Crimes Unit’s investigation, as the government’s Home Office, wary of the team’s eccentric methods, seeks to throw them off the case. But the nimble minds of Bryant and May are not so easily deterred. Delving into the history of the London theater and the disturbing origins of Punch and Judy, the detectives race to find the maniacal killer before he reaches his even deadlier final act.
Whip-smart and endlessly entertaining, The Memory of Blood is an ingeniously intricate mystery from the deliciously inventive Christopher Fowler.
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Bryant & May #15
