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Great reading but lots of dangling threads.

Reviewed in the United States on January 26, 2020

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The Bryant and May stories have been favorites of mine for a long time. Author Christopher Fowler seems to tie these stories in to modern life with a deft treatment that satisfies but also makes me a little wistful. The Lonely Hour spends much of its time showing us how involved people have allowed themselves to get in social media while cutting off most of their real life relationships. It's a soapbox I've been on for years now.

I found this book - number sixteen in the series - to be a little unsettling. There is real tension among the staff of The Peculiar Crimes Unit; some caused by the difficulty of getting a good handle on what is happening with the murders. This time Fowler has written the story so we know early on who the killer is but not why the victims are targeted. Something shocking happens in this story and there is no resolution given. I'm not ever a fan of a cliffhanger ending and that feeling extends to favorite authors and series too. I'm just glad that the author has included a statement in the Acknowledgement that says he will work out what's going to happen next. I hope he's been working on it already because there are a lot of loose ends that need to be gathered up. Naturally I'll be there for book #17 to see how he does it.

lisaleo (Lisa Yount)

wonderful characters, fabulous writing--as always

Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2019

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In this Peculiar Crimes Unit/Bryant and May installment, the crew pursues a killer who makes a point of doing in his victims at 4 AM: “the lonely hour,” as Bryant dubs it. Readers are told his name early on; the mystery is who he is and why he is targeting this particular group of people. Meanwhile, the Powers that Be are, as usual, looking for excuses to close down the maverick unit, and this time it is May, rather than the more obviously eccentric Bryant, who is in particular peril.

Veteran readers of this marvelous series are likely to be having so much fun with Bryant and the gang that they may not stop to notice what a fantastic writer Fowler is. Not only the series regulars and main mystery characters, but even the most minor characters who appear in only one scene, are so vividly described that they jump off the page. Scene descriptions are often haunting: “Clouds drifted apart like separating ice floes…. [Moon]light washed across the grass, turning the slope into a luminous tide, as if the landscape were lit from within.” Metaphors are poignant or hilarious, or both at once: “Raymond Land looked as if he had been subjected to immense gravitational force. It seemed impossible that anyone’s face could sag so far and fast overnight.” And then there’s all the wonderful London history: some bits are delivered as excerpts from a Bryant-led walking tour of London that I wish I could take, while others are improbably twisted into clues by that same indefatigable source.

In spite of all the laughs, an air of loss pervades the book: Crippen, the office cat, becomes sick and has to be put to sleep, and May learns that his ex-wife, long an inmate of a mental institution, has passed on as well. Loss and grief are also key factors behind the murders. And, finally, the book ends on a cliffhanger note threatening even greater disasters, offset only by Fowler’s ending line: “Bryant and May will return.”

They’d better!

A Cab Driver, A Bat Watcher, and a Man Named Hugo

Reviewed in the United States on August 24, 2020

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Every time I read a Peculiar Crimes Unit mystery, I wonder to myself how Fowler is possibly going to top the last one. And, just as always, I finished this newest volume thinking "Wow!" Especially at the end of the penultimate chapter.

Christmas celebrations have ended and once again the Peculiar Crimes Unit is called in when a man of Indian descent is found hanging upside down from a tree, surrounded by occult items. His time of death is estimated at 4 a.m. Senior detectives Bryant (the eccentric, outside-the-box theorist) and May (the erudite one) and their team are puzzling whether it's some sort of bizarre cult event (of course Arthur Bryant immediately contacts his friend Maggie, a practicing witch), bored punks, or more sinister forces when another 4 a.m. death occurs, a suicide this time—or was it? Unknown to them, a chubby young woman named Sparrow who was out watching bats with a conservation group has befriended the killer, and also knows both of the victims who died. In the meantime one of the PCU is not really who they seem, and John May has a secret which may endanger the group.

London folklore, Bryant's daffy investigative style, tensions simmering in the PCU, Sparrow's unwitting friendship, and the real story behind the crimes are deftly woven into another Fowler page-turner. I love these books. I can't wait for the next one to see how the resolution to aforementioned Chapter 49 comes out.

TRexDaddy

A Different Story

Reviewed in the United States on December 30, 2019

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Yes, every Bryant & May story includes Arthur being eccentric and John being levelheaded. Each prior novel had the PCU continuously balancing weird with pragmatic while fending off policy and procedure. At it’s core, this novel is no different and while the lightheartedness is there, it is a tad more bleak throughout. The murders are senseless and misguided but the investigation seems in a constant state of chaos that, even at the end, never fully resolves itself in the typical Bryant & May fashion. I can say I’m a bit pissed at the ending, a damned Sopranos blackout style cliffhanger, but I trust Fowler not to hank this series up. As always, a good read and leaves you definitely waiting for the next book to come.

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