Bryant & May on the Loose
A Peculiar Crimes Unit Mystery
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4.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Christopher Fowler’s Bryant & May off the Rails.
The Peculiar Crimes Unit is no more—disbanded, finished, kaput. After years of defying the odds and infuriating their superiors, detectives Arthur Bryant and John May have finally crossed the line. While Bryant takes to his bed, his bathrobe, and his esoteric books, the rest of the team takes to the streets looking for new careers—until one of them stumbles upon a gruesome murder.
Now the Unit is back for an 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 mystery with links to gangland crime, the 2012 London Olympics, and a half-man, half-stag creature that’s carrying off young women. It’s the kind of case that Bryant and May live to solve . . . and it could be the one that finally kills them.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fowler's unique blend of the comic and the grotesque is on full display in his excellent seventh Peculiar Crimes Unit mystery (after 2008's The Victoria Vanishes). With the special police unit shut down, Arthur Bryant is feeling withdrawn and depressed while his partner, John May, is considering PI work. When a former team member stumbles on a beheaded corpse in the heart of London's King's Cross neighborhood, May artfully uses the discovery to gain the PCU another lease on life. He persuades the higherups that unsolved gang crimes in the area could threaten the economic benefit anticipated from the 2012 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. The pacing, prose, planting of clues and characterizations are all top-notch.
