Showing results by author "Christopher Fowler" in All Categories

The odd couple of detection, the brilliant but cranky Arthur Bryant and John May of London's Peculiar Crimes Unit, return in a tense, atmospheric new thriller that keeps you guessing right to the end. This time the detectives are up against a series of bizarre murders that defy human understanding, and a killer no human hand may be able to stop.

The members of London's Peculiar Crimes Unit are on the case again when a dog walker is found dead. The method of the death is odd… the killer had no way in - or out - and the dog is nowhere to be seen. But the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ of the murder are not the only mysteries, and it seems...

One Sunday morning, the outspoken speaker of the House of Commons steps out of his front door only to be crushed under a mountain of citrus fruit. Bizarre accident or something more sinister? The government needs to know because here's a man whose knowledge of parliament’s biggest secret could put the future of the government at stake. It should be the perfect case for Bryant and May and the Peculiar Crimes Unit, but unfortunately one detective is in hospital, the other is missing and the staff have all been dismissed.

With the help of some of our more disreputable friends, each an argumentative and unreliable expert in his or her own dodgy field, we'll explain why some streets have genders, why only two Londoners got to meet Dracula, how a department store and a prison played tricks on your mind, when a theatre got stranded in the past, how a building vanished in plain sight, what excited Charlotte Brontë about the city and where the devils hide in London.

An artist is found dead in a gallery with locked doors and windows. A television presenter is struck by lightning while indoors. Two seemingly impossible crimes that only Arthur Bryant and John May of the Met's Peculiar Crimes Unit might be able to solve. But Bryant has lost his nerve, and May is fighting to keep the unit from closure. Worse still, an unsolved mystery from the past has returned to haunt them...

The unthinkable has happened at London's Peculiar Crimes Unit. In the depths of winter, a member of staff has been found murdered, and everyone who works there is suddenly a suspect. But Arthur Bryant and John May, the eccentric elderly detectives who run London's strangest crime division, aren't on hand to solve the crime. They've ventured into the heart of the English countryside, only to become stranded on a desolate snowbound section of road.

Long regarded as an anachronism, the Peculiar Crimes Unit is to be disbanded. For octogenarian detectives Arthur Bryant and John May, it seems retirement is now the only option. But then a headless body is found in a freezer, and a suspicious, gigantic figure has been spotted - dressed in deerskin and sporting antlers made of knives. It looks like the PCU are back in business...

One night, Arthur Bryant witnesses a drunken lady coming out of a pub. The next morning, she is found dead at the exact spot where their paths crossed. Even more disturbingly, the pub has vanished and the street has changed. Bryant is convinced that he saw them as they looked over a century before - is elderly detective losing his mind? Then it becomes clear that a number of women have met their ends in London pubs and the likeliest suspect seems to be a mental patient.

91 year-old Alice Hoffman died alone in her top floor flat. Social services say she slipped through the cracks in a failing system. But detectives Arthur Bryant & John May of the Peculiar Crimes Unit have their suspicions. Mrs Hoffman was not as innocent as she appeared. A former government...

The death of a child and what seems to be a murderous puppet make a perfect case for Bryant and May and the Peculiar Crimes Unit. As John May and his team interrogate the suspects, Arthur Bryant heads into the secret world of illusions and stagecraft. As a second impossible death occurs, the detectives uncover forgotten museums and London eccentrics. The stage is set for a race against time with a surprising twist...

Two teenagers who see a dead man rising from his grave. And if that's not alarming enough, one of them is killed in a hit and run accident. Soon it seems death is all around and Bryant and May must confront a group of latter-day bodysnatchers. More graves are desecrated, further deaths occur...

Arthur Bryant, John May and the Peculiar Crimes Unit is on the trail of an enigma: Mr Fox. His identity is false, and his links to society are invisible. Their search takes them into the vast labyrinth of the Underground, a subterranean world full of legends and ghost stations. Edging closer to what lies beneath the city, are Bryant and May about to uncover something truly bizarre?

The year is 1969 and ten guests are about to enjoy a weekend at Tavistock Hall. The guests also include detectives Arthur Bryant and John May – undercover, in disguise and tasked with protecting Monty Hatton-Jones, a whistle-blower turning Queen’s evidence in a massive bribery trial. The...

This is the memoir Christopher Fowler always wanted to write about 'writing'. It's the story of how a young bookworm growing up in a house where there was nothing to read but knitting pamphlets and motorcycle manuals became a writer—a 'word monkey'—and pursued a sort of career in popular fiction. And it's a book full of brilliant insights into the pleasures and pitfalls of his profession, dos and don'ts for would-be writers, and astute observations on favorite (and not-so-favorite) novelists.

A banking scandal has filled the city with violent protests, and a young homeless man burns to death after being caught between rioters and the police. But all is not as it seems; an opportunistic killer is using the chaos to exact revenge. Arthur Bryant and John May soon find their...

There's method in the madness of a murderer who strikes in the night's darkest hour.... On a rainy winter night outside a nightclub in London, four strangers meet for the first time at 4:00am. A few weeks later a body is found inside a willow tree on Hampstead Heath. The Peculiar Crimes Unit is...

Legendary editor, Maxim Jakubowski, delivers another chilling anthology collecting stories of cold-blooded murder, revenge and crimes-gone-wrong from the best of the best in crime fiction. Spine-chilling and gripping, these tales will grip you with their devious narrators and crafty twists.

In every detective's life there are cases that can't be discussed. Now Arthur Bryant has decided to open the files on 11 of these previously unseen investigations. The first-ever collection of Bryant & May stories not only sheds light on 11 classic cases but also contains everything you need to know about the two octogenarian detectives and the Peculiar Crimes Unit.

Absence doesn't make the heart grow fonder. It makes people think you're dead. So begins Christopher Fowler's foray into the back catalogues and backstories of 99 authors who, once hugely popular, have all but disappeared from our shelves. Whether male or female, domestic or international, flash-in-the-pan or prolific, mega-seller or prize-winner, no author, it seems, can ever be fully immune from the fate of being forgotten.

At a beautiful villa in the south of France, Hannah Carreras works as a maid. Under strict instructions never to speak to the guests, she blends into the background – but she sees everything. Including the mistress Summer, lounging by the pool awaiting the arrival of her married lover, Steve. When Steve finally shows at the villa – with his family unexpectedly in tow – Summer has vanished. Steve claims he never saw her. But Steve's wife is no fool: she knows there's something going on. Whose tiny bikini lies by the pool? Whose perfume is in the bathroom?