The Burning Man

September 21, 2015
The onset of a form of dementia for series lead Arthur Bryant adds poignancy to Fowler’s 12th Peculiar Crimes Unit mystery (after 2014’s Bryant & May and the Bleeding Heart). When London is convulsed by massive riots sparked by the revelation that banker Dexter Cornell walked away from his partnership with millions, despite having cheated the bank’s customers out of their savings, the unit seeks to restore public order. As the protestors’ looting and arson continue, someone fatally torches Freddie Weeks, a recent employee of a sustainable food market who was sleeping rough on the streets. Weeks’s killing is followed by others, committed in particularly sadistic fashion, but with no obvious link among the victims. A diagnosis of a rare cognitive disorder raises doubts about Bryant’s fitness to serve with the PCU. The solution may disappoint a bit, but Fowler is even better than usual at getting readers to care about his squad of misfits. Agent: Howard Morhaim, Howard Morhaim Literary Agency.

October 1, 2015
As riots send London into flaming chaos, the Peculiar Crimes Squad fights to solve a series of daily killings that have slipped under everyone else's radar. The likely insider trading of Dexter Cornell, a slippery partner in the Findersbury Private Bank, has so incensed Londoners that they've taken to the streets and torched buildings. In the midst of it all, a Molotov cocktail that kills a man sleeping on the bank steps brings in the PCU, whose takeover by the City of London has tightened the screws once again ("no more pawning items from the Evidence Room until payday].No selfies at crime scenes") on its free-wheeling senior detectives, Arthur Bryant and John May. The unit's ramrod new liaison, Superintendent Darren "Missing" Link, insists that their help be limited to identifying the corpse, but once they've tagged him as Freddie Weeks, ironically dubbed "Lucky" by his friends, their involvement rapidly snowballs. Aided by the CCTV cameras that seem to track every furtive movement in the city, they soon realize that this first victim was deliberately targeted by someone who seems determined to add a new corpse to their workload every day, some of the victims linked to the despicable Cornell, all of their ghoulish deaths linked by fire. Even worse, Mr. May sees that Mr. Bryant has been acting even more erratically than usual, no mean feat given Bryant's flamboyant history (Bryant & May and the Bleeding Heart, 2014, etc.). As the calendar ticks down to Guy Fawkes Day, Bryant and May and their junior colleagues race to catch the killer. Even though the ending fizzles this time, not even Arthur Bryant's alarming behavior can dampen the 12th installment in the most joyously inventive mystery series of our time.

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November 15, 2015

During a week of massive and sometimes violent demonstrations by antibank protesters in London, a young, homeless man is burned to death as he sleeps on the steps of a bank. The rest of the police force is busy with the protests, so the Peculiar Crimes Unit (PCU) is assigned the case. As the week progresses from Halloween to Guy Fawkes Day, more murders involving the creative use of fire are committed, and Bryant and May begin to realize they are all connected, to each other, if not the demonstrations. With threats to their unit and the city they've sworn to protect mounting daily, the two elderly detectives rush to uncover the links between the crimes and the identity of the killer in the hopes of saving London and their jobs. VERDICT Fans of the "Bryant and May" series will welcome this latest installment (after Bryant and May and the Bleeding Heart) with plenty of obscure historical details mixed with outre crimes and the banter of the PCU members. Newcomers will find plenty to enjoy as well without finding the amount of details included from earlier outings overwhelming. [See Prepub Alert, 6/8/15.]--Dan Forrest, Western Kentucky Univ. Libs., Bowling Green

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2015

British author Fowler has been nominated by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association for the Dilys Winn Award, given to titles booksellers really loved pushing, and The Victoria Vanishes won CrimeFest's Goldsboro Last Laugh Award for funniest mystery. Just so you know what you're in for here. Troubling little incidents in the run-up to Guy Fawkes Day get octogenarian detective Arthur Bryant out of bed after surgery and searching through the Peculiar Crimes Unit archives, to suddenly see the light regarding ten unsolved cases--all figuring in previous series titles and all related to the current incidents.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.