A Guide to London from Christopher Fowler's Peculiar Crimes Unit—So Much Fun!

 [Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“Fowler reports that his literary agent said (with delight) ‘Oh, it’s a Bryant & May book, just without the murder plot!’”

 

After 18 books full of the London detection adventures of 80-year-old Arthur Bryant and his partner John May (not as elderly and far more modern), Christopher Fowler allows his eccentric pair to lay out their very unusual knowledge of London for readers ready for a distinctively different travel guide.

 

Most importantly, this volume does not attach to specific investigations of the Peculiar Crimes Unit—a “venerable specialist police team … founded during the Second World War to investigate cases that could cause national scandal or public unrest” (Fowler’s website). Instead, it’s a delightfully ridiculous and historically rich set of explorations of the aspects of London that might be missed by a conventional tour guide: specifics of many, many pubs. Reading the book takes far longer if you pause to look up, say, the Lamb & Flag public house in Covent Garden; the pub’s very real website even shows the narrow passageway at the entrance described by Arthur Bryant. The menu includes buffalo-milk ice cream. (It’s shocking that Bryant misses this detail on his tour, but then again, the point of a public house for the PCU members involves an alcoholic beverage and British traditional dishes, right?)

 

DCI John May interrupts on occasion to remind Arthur of details like how to record on a cassette tape and what a mobile cell phone is called (Arthur calls it a walkie-phone), and sometimes to lend an air of almost normality among the 475 pages. Others making cameo appearances include co-workers and of course Raymond Land, head of the PCU. Land’s introduction includes such snarky comments as “If you’re still planning to read this volume of rambling conversations with half-mad friends, good luck to you. I reckon it’s your last chance to dodge a bullet but what do I know, I’m only the Unit chief. You’re big enough to look after yourselves. Don’t come complaining to me.”

 

Fowler reports that his literary agent said (with delight) “Oh, it’s a Bryant & May book, just without the murder plot!” Contrariwise, consider it a murder mystery that’s expanded its setting details to a highly realistic 475 pages (yes, that’s the second time mentioning the book size; how long was the last travel guide you carried? not the one on your walkie-phone, please). And where else can you find a page of “Bryantisms” all put together as a resource?

 

By now it should be clear that this book will be quite confusing to those who haven’t read at least one PCU mystery in the past. But there’s nothing wrong with a good factual compilation of London guided tour detail, heavy on the history, and wryly confusing, is there?

 

After all, where else can you find Arthur Bryant explaining London’s (non-pub-related) strength: “For every Terence Rattigan, Elizabeth Bower or George Eliot, there’s always a disreputable, struggling rebel writer seeking like-minded individuals. … For a bookish chap like me, Great Britain is a paradise.”

 

Besides, who else but Arthur Bryant is going to list for you the notables cremated at the Golders Green Crematorium? Fear not, he claims he’s not about to vanish into retirement or leave his city: “London is like a greedy old landlady. She didn’t ask me to come, didn’t invite me to stay, and won’t miss me when I’ve left. And that suits me fine.”

 

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

 

New Lynley Investigation from Elizabeth George, SOMETHING TO HIDE

 [Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“Elizabeth George can really spin a great investigation when she’s not trying so hard to teach the shocking discoveries she has made in her own explorations.”

Elizabeth George’s mysteries featuring Scotland Yard investigators Barbara Havers and Thomas Lynley began with A Great Deliverance in 1988. Now her 21st book in the series, Something to Hide, probes life and death in the Nigerian community of North London, along with the custom of female genital mutilation (FGM).

For those new to George’s work, the 687-page book isn’t likely to carry them into loving the series, because the noted Scotland Yard investigators don’t come into the action until page 119. And for readers who treasure Lynsley and Havers, that’s also a problem—chapters cascading about people who are in emotional and physical pain, in the midst of a socioeconomic disaster.

George clearly has done massive amounts of research for this book. Unfortunately, that message keeps coming back, when instead it might have been far more effective to simplify the plot a bit, and let the research take a backstage role.

The meeting in which Lynsley comes onto the case sums up the positioning of his investigation, in a politically challenging time:

“In [Lynley’s] morning meeting with Assistant Commissioner Sir David Hiller and the head of the Press Office, Stephen Deacon, the political concerns of both men had been writ large enough and dark enough for a mole in sunlight to read them. … Teo Bontempi was not only a police detective, she was a Black police detective. The last thing the Metropolitan Police needed to have hurled at them was an accusation that not enough was being thrown into the investigation because the office in question was Black or female or both. Racism, sexism, misogyny … There could not be a whisper of any of this during the investigation and did the Acting Detective Chief Superintendent understand what was being said?”

Even after this, the book is plagued by too many points of view and not enough agency. Series readers, who’ll want to tackle this anyway, may do best to skip “Part I” in order to leap into the investigation. Newcomers to the Lynsley books should probably try an earlier title.

That said, if this weren’t a “genre” book – that is, a Scotland Yard investigation – it might stand as an imposing literary probe of Nigerian/North London culture. Perhaps that’s how it should instead be shelved. But then the author would need to take out the endless attempts at Black language, wouldn’t she?

There are better books to stack on the bedside table or take to a desert island. Which is a shame, because Elizabeth George can really spin a great investigation when she’s not trying so hard to teach the shocking discoveries she has made in her own explorations.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Brief Mention: FAREWELL BLUES from Maggie Robinson, Series Finale

There are plenty of mentions that FAREWELL BLUES is the end of Maggie Robinson's light-hearted and romantic Lady Adelaide series (including on the author's website), so this is not really a spoiler! This is the fourth book of these 1920s mysteries, with paranormal humor provided by Lady Adelaide's late husband Rupert, assigned to help her solve crimes and resolve her personal life, as a way to recover from his own sins and finally make it to heaven.

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the Lady Adelaide books has been the protagonist's gradual realization that she may become involved with a man from entirely outside her social "set." Not only is Inspector Devand Hunter a police officer—he's also of Indian heritage and London's not ready for such a romance.

The casual racism repeatedly demonstrated in the series is lightened here by Dev narrating some of the chapters, and by the entertainment value of Rupert's ability to pop in and out of scenes, as well as to pry into Lady Adelaide's thoughts. Series fans will want to discover how Robinson wraps up the series, including her three (!) epilogues. 

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

The Anti-Sherlock Holmes, William Arrowood, Returns in THE MURDER PIT

Glasgow-born Mick Finlay has taken rough conditions to the extreme, including the condition of his detective, in his second Arrowood mystery, THE MURDER PIT. And it's a doozy. With twists, risks, extreme danger, and graphic descriptions of filth and poverty, it's an outrageous counter to the civilied Sherlock Holmes narratives supposedly being printed at the same time that Arrowood and his loyal sidekick Norman Barnett are scrambling to make a living. And there's a fierce rivalry between Arrowood, the "workingman's detective," and the pricey and elegant Holmes: one that's more than just the part of the city where they live, the amount they get paid, the gap between praise and vilification in the London newspapers.

For Arrowood, a man of enormous heart (and girth), opens the interior of crime by observing the personality and emotions of the person he's facing. He puzzles over Darwin, sort out early psychology, grieves for the lot of the people in the slums around him in an emotional stew quite foreign to the celebrated cerebral sleuth of Baker Street. As he warms up to a case involving a woman who can't seem to speak for herself -- she's severely learning disabled and has been married off in a suspicious financial transaction, to a disgusting farm far from home -- Arrowood depends on Barnett's initial survey of the possibly forced bride:

"So Birdie looked in low spirits in train?" he asked, shoving the last piece of warm muffin in his gob.

"That's what it looked like to me. And I felt she wanted to show me too. But I couldn't swear by it. It was dark, and she only looked up quick."

"We ca all recognize grief," he said. "Mr. Darwin says it's universal: raised inner eyebrows, furrowed forehead, lowered mouth corners. The Hindoos, the Malays, the ancient Greeks—all the same. If we couldn't recognize sadness in others we couldn't sympathize. And what would society be like without sympathy, Barnett?"

"Like London sometimes, sir."

Brace for filth, and description of disgusting conditions, from the reek of Arrowood himself, to the pig manure and malicious violence that follow when the pair dig into what's going on in a very unscrupulous medical practice. It's often ugly in Arrowood's London.

But it's also a city of passion and surprising tenderness, and Barnett himself will finally reveal the sorry state of his life to his employer, whose caring is direct and honest. (Just don't get close enough to let Arrowood enfold you in an embrace, an action that again the posh Sherlock Holmes would not condone.)

The devil may be in the details. Walking with this unusual detection team may turn your stomach every few pages. Yet the plot twists are agile, the discoveries worth the work, and yes, I'd read another in this series. I liked the first one, too (Arrowood.) Brought from the UK by the Mira imprint of HarperCollins.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Anne Perry, DARK TIDE RISING (William Monk #24), Deep, Dark, and Satisfying

There are two components that make many a crime novel memorable over the long haul: the twists of the plot, and the way the crime's investigator stands up as a person—his or her courage, integrity, sense of humor, intelligence, and most of all, capacity to care.

That last aspect may seem a bit out of place at first. But it's what makes Louise Penny's Armand Gamache seem "known" to his legions of fans; it's what carries Carol O'Connell's prickly and dangerous Kathy Mallory into the hearts of her colleagues and readers; it's the part of Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch, and even Lee Child's feckless Jack Reacher, that pulls us to the next title, and the next.

And it's what makes Anne Perry's police Commander William Monk someone you might want for a neighbor, or on your local police force, in spite of his location in 1881 England.

In DARK TIDE RISING, Monk accepts a mission to protect the life of a wealthy real estate developer racing to ransom his kidnapped younger wife. Harry Exeter has a marriage Monk can connect with, because it's so much like his own: an unexpected and intensely valued relationship discovered against the odds, with a woman whose life is clearly worth sacrificing a fortune to save.

The protection effort and would-be rescue is going to have to take place at Jacob's Island, though. It's a location Monk knows far too well: a desperate slum of 1800s London, permeated by deadly tidal surges and even quicksand. He's witnessed death there: "He could still see the fat man sinking slowly into the tidal ooze, his mouth open, screaming, until the mud cut him off, and inch by inch he disappeared from sight." How can Monk organize his team to prevent such a disaster, while also bringing back the kidnap victim, Kate Exeter? Immaculate organization and planning must take place.

But Monk's efforts, with his men, the River Police, go quickly awry, and he's plunged into a very different and equally disastrous situation:

What he had not said, and what weighed on Monk's mind with further pain, was the thought that the kidnappers had known so much about their plans. There were five or six different ways the River Police could have got in, but the kidnappers had known precisely which ones they were going to use, how many man, and where they were along those tunnels and passages. What he forced himself to wonder was, who had told them?

It hurt even to think the words and yet they were there, whether he said them or not.

Perry's drama takes place in a setting where the gap between wealth and poverty set up extremes that were, in themselves, life-threatening, and the amount of effort for policing as she portrays it is accentuated by the absence of modern crime-solving tools and techniques. What Monk and his friends, including his insightful wife, must depend on is their sense of geography, their probing of human nature, and, in this rapidly developing and often twisting case, the classic threesome of crime: means, motive, opportunity. Here, the motive must somehow involve finances, as more threats and a whistle-blower's death are added to the events. But why?

Watching Monk sort out the motives of both the criminals and his own team members is fascinating, and emotionally compelling. Leadership, the power of friendship among men, struggles for the sake of each other ... these, as much as the sucking force of London's tides, deepen DARK TIDE RISING and make it one of Perry's best books.

No need to read the preceding Monk titles before plunging into this one, although of course they'll enrich the perspective on the characters. But Perry's a pro, laying out her characters and their past anguish with spare, quick details, making this a wicked good read. The publication date is September 18, from Random House. Pick up the hardcover first edition as a treat to yourself, an anchor of hope in humanity in this politically fraught season.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Gower St Detective Series #3, DEATH DESCENDS ON SATURN VILLA, M.R.C. Kasasian

M.R.C. (Martin) Kasasian's Gower St Detective Series is quirky, often confusing, frequently dark, threaded through with vicious humor -- and irresistible in terms of posing puzzles to solve and placing it all in the most graphic sort of Victorian world.

In short, I like these books. A lot. My only problem has been deciding which friends to share them with. It's entirely possible that anyone I give a Gower St book to will think I am as strange as the characters within. Alas!

And they are fiercely memorable characters. For instance, there's the narrator, a young woman named March Middleton -- except she only narrates part of DEATH DESCENDS ON SATURN VILLA. There's her godfather Sidney Grice, most famous and most unpleasant detective in the mean streets of London. (Not to mention his insistence on disgusting vegetarian meals, his abuse of his untutored maid-of-all-work, and his scorn for March Middleton herself.)

The puzzles set before March and Grice in the previous two books, The Mangle Street Murders and The Curse of the House of Foskett, have dragged March into gutters and gruesome crime scenes. Her assistance to Grice is a painful necessity: Stranded in his home, unable to live separately due to the mores of Victorian London (and lack of funds), she's caught up in his investigations for lack of anything else to do. And even though his lessons to her are mean-spirited and stingy, she's learning how to assess a crime scene.

But as DEATH DESCENDS ON SATURN VILLA opens, March is on her own, unexpectedly, when a summons arrives from a relative she never knew existed. Risky though it is to accept such an invitation, she feels compelled: Perhaps this new "uncle" can shed light on the terrible suspicion she's harboring about her godfather's role in the death of her own mother.

What March can't have expected, though, is that Uncle Tolly's home will exert such odd effects on her that she'll soon be convinced she herself has committed murder. Will Sidney Grice exert himself far enough to solve her case? Or will his evidence condemn her in court?

Even as March struggles to gain Grice's assistance, the pair continue to play out a "who's on first" sort of dialogue with the uneducated, blunt-tongued maid, Molly:

"Dear March," Mr G spoke tenderly, "I think you may be telling the truth that you do not know if you did it -- whatever it may be."

Molly came in and put a tea tray on the table. "Cook said I was very rude to say that about your dress the other day, miss."

"It does not matter," I told her.

"I just wanted to make it clear," she continued. "There wasn't not nothing wrong with the dress. Anybody else might have looked pretty in it."

"Thank you, Molly."

"And -- "

"Get out," her employer commanded, "before Miss Middleton attacks you as she allegedly did the last maid who crossed her path."

"Oh miss." Molly put her hand to her mouth. "I never even knew you had a path. I hope I never allegingly cross it."

As you can see, the further you're drawn into DEATH DESCENDS ON SATURN VILLA, the more you are trapped halfway between Alice in Wonderland, and Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, with a dash of Jasper Fforde on the top. Is this your kind of book?

I confess it's mine on alternate Tuesdays and Thursdays, and crazy though the series is, I can't put the books down, once I start them. Kasasian's plot twists are always unexpected and bizarre, although perfectly reasonable in hindsight (considering the characters involved). The pace is brisk, and the frank depiction of the dirt and dismay of Victorian everyday life is oddly endearing. Most of all, March Middleton is someone worth saving, somehow, so her disappearance in the middle of DEATH DESCENDS presses the book into desperate straits.

I know -- you're going to tell me you are NOT one of the people I should give this book to. Wait -- you've read this far? Maybe ... maybe you like this crazy British humor in detective guise, after all? Go ahead -- get a copy and enjoy snickering and snorting.

Yes, you can read this without reading the other two books first. But I think it's a lot more fun for this series to take one after another. Mute the phone, and keep the tea and crumpets (no cold cabbage stews!) coming.

PS - There's no author website at the moment, as far as I can tell, although Pegasus Crime hosts a launching spot for Kasasian. Look for him on social media instead.

Lively Victorian Mystery, A CURIOUS BEGINNING, Deanna Raybourn

For regular readers of historical mysteries, Deanna Raybourn is a familiar name, author of the Lady Julia Grey series. A CURIOUS BEGINNING is the start of a new series, featuring Victoria Speedwell -- and it's great fun.

Victoria's been an orphan "all her life" pretty much -- adopted (after her mother's death) as a small child by two spinster aunts, and moving often from one location in England to another. As an adult, she's already a much-traveled adventurer and lepidopterist whose butterfly-collecting adventures include travel overseas, exploration of volcanoes and jungles, and a generous amount of romantic yet unfettered exploration along the way. (But never with anyone from "home," from England.)

At the modest funeral in 1887 for her remaining aunt, whom she tended at the end, Victoria realizes that while she may not have many riches beyond her butterfly net and her adroitly fashioned clothing (and modest protective gear, from hatpins to blades), she's free to make her own way. "Aunt Nell had been the final knotted obligation tying me to England, and I was unfettered once and for all, able to make my way in the world as I chose."

After bluntly declining plans made by the local vicar and his wife for her future, her return to her aunts' home to collect her carpetbag and leave the key is abruptly knocked off kilter by an invasion and attempted kidnapping. The Baron Maximilian von Stauffenbach arrives in the nick of time to assist her, and escorts her to London (a very festive city, preparing for the Golden Jubilee of the Queen) -- where he leaves her for safekeeping in the fascinating home-and-workshop of a clever if grouchy taxidermist, Mr. Stoker. But the Baron's murder quickly puts an end to any safety in this location, as well as to Victoria's hopes of learning about her dead mother from the Baron, who seemed somehow connected. Soon she's in flight with Stoker, toward refuge with a gypsy circus, and more threats, risks, and adventures.

The change is just what she needed:

I was not meant for sickrooms and poultices; I was fashioned of the stern stuff of adventurers. ... I felt in this new adventure I was rousing to life again. I was a butterfly, newly emerged from the chrysalis, damp winged and trembling with anticipation. ... There would be time enough for my own flight, I decided.

Yet even circus travel isn't safe enough, as murderers and other violent sorts pick up her trail. Soon Victoria's showing her courage and skills, and rather regretting, in terms of her companion, Stoker, that she's made a practice of not romancing Englishmen.

I enjoyed this lively romp with a heroine who surely would have scandalized her Victorian contemporaries -- although of course there were similar adventurous women in that time who simply left their stodgy homeland and arrived in, say, Arabia. Victoria Speedwell is clearly their sort. Her escapades and escapes are a delight. And if the final untwisting of the mystery is a wee bit over the top, well, it's all in fun anyway, just as every day with this staunch scientific romantic is bound to be. I look forward to more in the series! And since this is a new series, there's no need to go looking for preceding titles.

Victoria Speedwell isn't quite as firmly in charge as, say, Georgette Heyer's "Grand Sophy," but she's much more aware and skilled than Marguerite St. Just in The Scarlet Pimpernel. Her scientific knowledge, of course, brings to mind Alan Bradley's Flavia de Luce. And as a whole, the book has the merriment of a good Sherlock Holmes pastiche. Recommended for pure entertainment!

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.