Mon 17 Jan 2011
A Review by Ray O’Leary: CHRISTOPHER FOWLER – Bryant & May Off the Rails.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[4] Comments
CHRISTOPHER FOWLER – Bryant & May Off the Rails. Bantam, hardcover, November 2009; trade paperback, September 2010. First UK edition: Transworld/Doubleday, hardcover 2010.
The Peculiar Crimes Unit are still moving into the empty warehouse that will be their headquarters when they capture the serial killer known as the King’s Cross Executioner. Unfortunately for the Unit, Mr. Fox, as he is known to them, manages to kill one of the team and escape from their headquarters.
So once again, unless they can recapture Mr. Fox by the end of the week, the Unit, headed by the elderly detective team of Arthur Bryant and John May is in danger of being disbanded.
All they know about Mr. Fox is that his murders have been committed in the area of the King’s Cross Underground Station. Bryant is convinced that he will not leave the area because he is somehow psychologically tied to the locality around King’s Cross.
Then they are called in by the Unit’s former medical examiner when a young, single mother is killed by a fall down a flight of stairs in the subway. The reader knows it was murder, but was it committed by Mr. Fox? On the back of the woman’s coat was a sticker which the Unit eventually traces to a group of University students sharing a house. Then one of those students goes missing.
This seemed to me somewhat less satisfying than the previous cases of the Peculiar Crimes Unit. It strikes me that the author was consciously trying to make John May less eccentric than in previous books, although Bryant is still the same. It does have a pretty good final 50 pages or so and plenty of information about the London Underground system for those interested.
The Bryant and May series —
1. Full Dark House (2003)
2. The Water Room (2004)
3. Seventy-Seven Clocks (2005)
4. Ten Second Staircase (2006)
5. White Corridor (2007)
6. The Victoria Vanishes (2008)
7. Bryant & May on the Loose (2009)
8. Bryant & May Off the Rails (2010)
January 18th, 2011 at 10:39 am
I liked this one. Fowler is one of my faves of the current contemporary writers. I was reminded of Barbara Vine’s King Solomon’s Carpet, a suspense thriller that deals heavily with the tube system in London, while reading this. I liked the puzzle elements moreso than …On the Loose and The Victoria Vanishes. But I think White Corridor is still Fowler’s best in terms of utter ingenuity for an impossible crime (not the serial killer portion, though). It’s definitely something that I’ve never read in any other detective novel in the entire genre, it certainly wouldn’t be dealt with in any Golden Age book.
John
January 18th, 2011 at 12:00 pm
This is a series I haven’t yet caught up with, at least in terms of sitting down and reading them. I’m sure I have all eight so far. I imagine I’ll start at the beginning, even though you’re not the only one, John, who’s said that WHITE CORRIDOR is the best.
January 18th, 2011 at 5:30 pm
Steve –
The first three are definitely good with The Water Room (includes the impossible murder of a drowning in a dry basement) and Seventy-Seven Clocks being the strangest and most appealing to me. I wouldn’t have kept up with Fowler if they weren’t. Reading in order is not necessary since the early books jump all over the time spectrum. Starting with White Corridor, I believe, all the books take place in the present day and are fairly sequential.
Also, here are three lesser known Fowler books that include Bryant & May before they became a sensation of sorts:
RUNE – more of a supernatural thriller, but very good all the same.
DARKEST DAY – a horror novel that includes zombies. Apparently this was re-written and became SEVENTY-SEVEN CLOCKS (minus the zombies)
SOHO BLACK – a serial killer detective thriller
All three are out of print, but Rune can easily be found in the on-line used book markets. The other two are very hard to find. Anywhere. I’ve been trying to locate an affordable copy of SOHO BLACK for sometime now.
More info on Christopher Fowler’s books can be found at his website.
John
January 18th, 2011 at 8:40 pm
I love, love, LOVE this odd little series. That’s interesting about those three hard-to-find early Fowler books. I’ve never heard of them before.
Bryant and May are two of the more intriguing mystery ‘pairs’ around, that’s for sure. I always look forward to their latest adventure. I wish I knew how to ‘classify’ this series, but I’m still trying to figure it out.