A controversial artist is found dead in her own art installation inside a riverside gallery with locked doors and windows - the only witness is a small boy who insists the murderer was a masked man on a horse. Two seemingly impossible crimes that only Arthur Bryant and John May of the Met's Peculiar Crimes Unit might be able to solve.
The unthinkable has happened at London's Peculiar Crimes Unit. With the exception of Arthur Bryant and John May that is, for the eccentric detectives who run London's strangest crime division are stranded on a desolate snowbound road somewhere in the West Country on their way to a spiritualists' convention.
“Traditional mystery buffs with a taste for the offbeat will relish British author Fowler's wonderful second contemporary whodunit featuring the Peculiar Crimes Unit and its elderly odd couple, Arthur Bryant and John May.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) How can an elderly recluse drown in a chair in her otherwise dry basement? That’s what John May and Arthur Bryant of London’s Peculiar Crimes Unit set out to discover in a city rife with shady real estate developers, racist threats, dodgy academicians, and someone dangerously obsessed with Egyptian mythology. Linking them all is an evil lurking in London’s vast and forgotten underground river system—a killer with the eerie ability to strike anywhere, anytime, without leaving a clue. It’s a subterranean case of secrets, lies, and multiple murder that defies not only the law, but reason itself. Can Bryant and May bring a killer to the surface and stop the dark tide of murder before it pulls them under, too? “A clever twist on the traditional police procedural . . . The real thrill here is the delightful duo in the starring roles, two fresh and unusual characters who manage to breathe new life into an established genre in which it’s getting harder and harder to find anything genuinely fresh.”—Booklist “Humorous, engaging.”—Kirkus Reviews
London is in the grip of an epidemic. Across the city, people are dying in freak accidents. There doesn't seem to be much of a connection, until some of the bodies yield puzzling strips of paper. Each one carries angular, indecipherable hieroglyphics. Advertising executive Harry Buckingham, to his horror, is linked with several of the victims. His father, his secretary, even the thief who steals his car all die in horrific circumstances. Soon he's avoiding the police and following his own investigation. What he uncovers is more frightening than anyone can imagine. A multinational company has succeeded in combining sophisticated technology with ancient mythology. Harry calls it pure evil. The devil is loose in London. And only a handful of people know enough to stop the most hostile take-over bid of all time...
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. Bryant and May, the irascible detectives, know that time is the key.
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.
Příběh s prapodivným provokativním názvem se odehrává v centru dnešního Londýna. Jeho protagonisty jsou dva mladí muži: ambiciózní začínající novinář Vincent Reynolds a bohatý nudící se aristokrat Sebastian Wells. Dohromady je svede Vincentův záměr napsat reportáž o životě mnohamilionového města a jeho různorodých obyvatel. Při sběru informací Vincent vypátrá, že Sebastian předsedá záhadnému spolku s problematickou minulostí, a pokusí se do něj tajně proniknout. Je odhalen a za trest musí absolvovat riskantní noční hru, která ho zavede do labyrintu historických zákoutí. V této hře jde o život, a to nejeden, její konec je však překvapivý.
It was the kind of story that barely made the news.When 91-year-old Amelia Hoffman died in her top-floor flat on a busy London road, it's considered an example of what has gone wrong with modern society: she slipped through the cracks in a failing system.But detectives Arthur Bryant and John May of the Peculiar Crimes Unit have their doubts. Mrs Hoffman was once a government security expert, even though no one can quite remember her. When a link emerges between the old lady and a diplomat trying to flee the country, it seems that an impossible murder has been committed.Mrs Hoffman wasn't the only one at risk. Bryant is convinced that other forgotten women with hidden talents are also in danger. And, curiously, they all own models of London Bridge.With the help of some of their more certifiable informants, the detectives follow the strangest of clues in an investigation that will lead them through forgotten alleyways to the city's oldest bridge in search of a desperate killer.But just when the case appears to be solved, they discover that Mrs Hoffman was smarter than anyone imagined. There's a bigger game afoot that could have terrible consequences. It's time to celebrate Bryant and May's twentieth anniversary as their most lunatic case yet brings death and rebirth to London's most peculiar crimes unit.
A hotel offers a taboo service for its troubled clients. A young man must wind a thousand clocks before sunset. A vampire library attacks its readers. A shy young man loses a dog and discovers the cutlery of the Marquis de Sade. A lottery winner soon wishes he hadn't won. Deranged office workers take over a building. Incarceration, incantations, revenge, romance and the end of the world - twice. Personal Demons are Christopher Fowler's tales of the the fantastic and the wilder side of modern urban living. They reflect the rich and various talents of a writer called 'ghoulishly irresistible' by The Times.
