Bryant & May Hall of mirrors

Review by New York Times Review

The pretty Canadian village of Three Pines is slumbering peacefully through the "long, long, dark, dark, Québec winter" in Louise Penny's latest mystery, KINGDOM OF THE BLIND (Minotaur, $28.99), when it is suddenly hit by a blizzard. The temperature drops to a chilling minus 35 degrees, snow blankets the village green and neighbors trudge through the towering drifts to warm themselves by the fireside at the local inn. But while the setting is entrancing, everyone knows that, "in the countryside, winter was a gorgeous, glorious, luminous killer." And to prove that point, an old farmhouse collapses under the snow, trapping someone inside. Luckily, Armand Gamache, chief superintendent of the Sureté du Québec, is on the scene to deliver comfort and establish order. "He relied on, and trusted, both his rational mind and his instincts," Penny says of her avuncular detective, who is surely one of the most endearing specimens of his kind. But there is no shortage of appealing characters in this series, from Ruth Zardo, an aged and delightfully rude poet and her equally foulmouthed pet duck, to Bertha, the cleaning woman, who may very well be the titled baroness she calls herself. Typical of this author, the core mystery is a delicate matter and rather sad, something that draws the villagers closer together instead of tearing them apart. When Penny wants to darken the story, she shifts the action from the pristine village of Three Pines to inner-city Montreal, where the streets are vile. "Never safe. Never clean_Darker, filthier. Clogged with excrement, puke." Here, she picks up a grittier subplot involving a young cadet who's on the verge of being expelled from the Sureté Academy. Should the girl have been admitted in the first place? Gamache pointedly asks the academy's commander. "A stoned former prostitute junkie who's dealing opioids in the academy?" he responds. "Are you kidding? She's a delight." Not a delight, exactly, but another outstanding - and completely unexpected - character in a constantly surprising series that deepens and darkens as it evolves. Arthur Bryant has written his memoirs - and a jolly good yarn they make, too. In bryant & MAY: HALL OF MIRRORS (Bantam, $27), Christopher Fowler transports crotchety Bryant and his suave sleuthing partner, John May, back to the 1960s, when those two old dears were mere youngsters, just starting out in the hippy-dippy days of "Swinging London." ("This is so groovy!" May observes of a colorful Canal Carnival in Camden Town.) As the only detectives in the Peculiar Crimes Unit, the partners are entrusted to watch over Monty Hatton-Jones, the key witness in a court case against a shady developer whose latest high-rise venture collapsed, killing some unfortunates. When their flighty charge takes off for a weekend at a country estate, the sleuths find themselves in a manor house mystery amusingly fitted out with chilly aristocrats, their family art collections (the Gainsborough and the Reynolds are quality goods, but "the PreRaphaelites are vulgar and virtually unsaleable") and their hereditary ghosts. As always in this series, this one's a lark. Ever since Oedipus, literary heroes have been searching for - or running from - their fathers, a theme that still bedevils many a mystery story. Joe Talbert Jr., the protagonist of Allen Eskens's prodigal son novel, the shadows WE HIDE (Mulholland, $27), follows that classic route, only to discover that the man he believes to have been his father was a nasty human being: a brutal husband, an unfit father and, as one person in the know puts it, "a jerk." Being in sore need of professional redemption, Talbert, a young reporter facing a defamation suit, hardly needs to hear this. While he comes off second best in a humiliating bar fight, he gets another chance to prove his manhood by standing up to a family of white supremacists and eventually solving his own father's murder. And because we're now living in a brave new world where manhood is defined in broader, more humanitarian terms, Talbert proves himself a true hero by the loving care he extends to a younger brother with special needs. Every detective has a case that haunts him. For the Chicago cops Hank Purcell and Marvin Bondarowicz, that would be the "dead kid in the suitcase" whose broken body epitomizes "some kind of evil that was one-of-a-kind, fresh and original down to its buttons." In writing SUITCASE CHARLIE (Kasva Press, paper, $14.95), John Guzlowski was inspired by a true crime that horrified his city in 1955 and retains the power to shock us today. Even the hardbitten police lieutenant in charge of the fictionalized case is shaken by the singular brutality of the unknown killer. "And when you find him," he tells his officers, "I want you to hurt him." The sheer cruelty of the case's multiple murders demands coarse language, at which Guzlowski excels. But in describing the saintly Sisters of St. Joseph nuns who live near the murder scene as "tough broads, eyes like razors," he lets us know that, back in the day, the city of Chicago was an all-around rough town. Marilyn stasio has covered crime fiction for the Book Review since 1988. Her column appears twice a month.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 11, 2019]

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Review by Booklist Review

The intrepid detective duo of Arthur Bryant and John May, of London's Peculiar Crimes Unit, encounters murder and mayhem in an English manor. "Shades of Agatha Christie, as Bryant comments in recounting the case, which took place in September 1969. Bryant and May are at risk of losing their livelihoods after accidentally blowing up a barge. They can redeem themselves by guarding Monty Hatton-Jones, a key witness in an upcoming trial, who insists on attending a weekend party at Tavistock Hall, soon to be sold by Lady Banks-Marion to millionaire Donald Burke. So the detectives go along, joining guests Burke and his wife, his lawyer, his young mistress, an interior decorator, a vicar, and a mystery novelist. With the manor cut off from the outside world over the weekend, thanks to nearby army maneuvers, the mayhem starts when a gargoyle is pushed from the roof onto Hatton-Jones. This is just the beginning, with the narrative veering between laugh-out-loud funny to macabre (a body in a macerator, murder by knitting needle). This fifteenth Bryant and May outing concludes with an updating on the lives of all the characters. Could this signal an end to the long-running, eccentric, and consistently entertaining series? Let's hope not.--Michele Leber Copyright 2018 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Set in 1969, Fowler's solid 15th Peculiar Crimes Unit mystery (after 2017's Bryant & May: Wild Chamber) lacks the series' usual bizarre elements but in compensation offers a scenario right out of an Agatha Christie novel. When the efforts of eccentric detectives Arthur Bryant and John May to apprehend someone they believe to be an escaped murderer ends up sinking a ship, they're taken off regular duties and assigned to watch over whistle-blower Monty Hatton-Jones, a company director who's scheduled to testify against Sir Charles Chamberlain. Chamberlain, a wealthy London housing developer, has been charged with bribery. A few days before the trial, Bryant and May accompany Hatton-Jones to Tavistock Hall, a country house where their charge is spending the weekend. Tavistock Hall ends up cut off from the outside world because of some military exercises mistakenly scheduled for the area, an unfortunate circumstance that creates a closed circle of suspects after a grisly murder is committed. Fowler evokes the period as neatly as he crafts the plot. Agent: Howard Morhaim, Howard Morhaim Literary. (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

In Fowler's 15th Bryant and May adventure (after Wild Chamber), London's oldest detectives are young again-or at least younger. It is 1969, and the city is swinging with mod fashion, music, and art. John May embraces the cultural changes, but socially awkward Arthur Bryant takes a more jaundiced view, calling Swinging London "a con." After accidentally blowing up a regatta barge painted like the Yellow Submarine, the duo are banished from the Peculiar Crimes Unit and ordered to protect a key prosecution witness for the weekend. But Monty Hatton-Jones insists on traveling to Tavistock Hall in rural Kent to attend a house party hosted by Lady Banks-Marion and her son, Harry. Mayhem and murder break out when the manor and its inhabitants are cut off from the outside world by bad weather and army maneuvers. It's up to Bryant and May to save the day. VERDICT In this off-the-wall salute to the Golden Age country house mystery, longtime fans will enjoy discovering the origins of Bryant's trademark scarf, yellow Mini-Cooper, and love of medicinal marijuana, but they will miss the series' trademark London lore. Likewise the lively humor has devolved into slapstick, and the convoluted plot will try readers' patience. To grasp the charm of this quirky series, newbies should start with an earlier title such as the series opener, Full Dark House. [See Prepub Alert, 6/10/18.]-Wilda Williams, New York © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A prequel that finds Fowler's imperishable detective duo (Bryant May: Wild Chamber, 2017, etc.) already in hot water back in 1969 as they struggle to solve a country-house mystery deep in Kent, far from the resources of their Peculiar Crimes Unit.When their lively pursuit of sociopathic criminal Burlington Bertie, ne Cedric Powles, gets a little too lively for public safety, Bryant and May's boss, Roger Trapp, dispatches them on a more routine assignment: to babysit businessman Monty Hatton-Jones over the weekend, keeping him safe until he can give evidence against crooked developer Sir Charles Chamberlain Monday morning. What could possibly go wrong? Only this: Monty's fears for his life don't prevent him from accepting a weekend invitation from Lady Beatrice Banks-Marion, who's about to sell her late husband's estate, Tavistock Hall, to millionaire Donald Burke for repurposing as the Burke Better Business School. Monty has a deal brewing with Burke and doesn't intend to be talked out of the trip. Instead, he gets Bryant and May invited along with him, where they join Lady Beatrice's stoner son, Lord Harry; Burke; his wife, Norma; his lawyer, Toby Stafford; nightclub singer Vanessa Harrow; mystery novelist Pamela Claxon; decorator Slade Wilson; the Rev. Trevor Patethric; and diverse members of the Tavistock domestic staff. A local army unit's war games effectively isolate the place, making departure possible only through death, which obligingly arrives in the shape of five separate attempts on the lives of the assembled company, two of them successful. Suddenly, protecting the life of Monty Hatton-Jones looks like the least of Bryant and May's problems.The inspired idea of revisiting the youth of his aged sleuths in swinging England is matched by Fowler's customary gusto in sweating the details. More fully fleshed-out suspects, clues, red herrings, twists, and honest mystery and detection than in the last three whodunits you read. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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1. Get Back 'Considering they're written by an elderly police detective with a faulty memory,' Arthur Bryant's editor said as he perused the cheaper end of the wine list, 'your memoirs have sold rather well.' 'Not well enough to earn me any money,' Bryant replied, cleaning his fork on the end of his tie. Simon Sartorius ignored the jibe. He was a gentleman of the old school. The phrase 'hale and hearty' might have been coined for him. He favoured striped shirts from Turnbull & Asser, cuff links, blazers and comfortable Oxford toe caps, and probably owned a straw Panama for his holidays in Provence. His spectacle-­clad eyes always smiled and his face appeared naturally cheerful in repose. It was why Bryant had selected him. Such a man, he felt, would always be honest and patient, or at the very least polite. For his part, Simon was already starting to regret taking his author to lunch today. It wasn't that he disliked Bryant in any way; he simply could not understand what the fellow was about. There was an air of devilry about him that made you want to keep checking on the cutlery. Wedged in the gloomiest corner of an alcove in a Chelsea restaurant that validated its shabbiness by being French, Bryant had reluctantly parted with his overcoat but had managed to outwit the waiter and hang on to his immense rainbow-­striped scarf. The thing was draped around his neck like a shedding boa constrictor. 'Of course,' Simon said, 'some less charitable critics have suggested that your first volume should have been filed under Fantasy.' Bryant shrugged. 'What is reality?' 'Well, it's the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional sense of them.' The editor liked to be clear about these matters. 'That's easy for you to say.' Bryant checked his huge white false teeth in the blade of his knife. 'My memories are like patches of old road that have to be repaired now and again. Everyone knows that memories become real over time.' 'Nevertheless, if readers buy your memoirs expecting a realistic account of life in one of London's special detection units and find themselves with a volume of speculative fiction, they should really be informed,' said Simon, not unreasonably. 'I don't see why,' Bryant replied. 'They happily believe the tabloids.' Simon understood that cheeriness would always achieve more than antagonism, so he ploughed on. 'I do think that telling them you were investigating crimes during the Blitz is pushing it a bit.' He searched in vain for a waiter. 'Perhaps a tad more honesty next time?' Bryant mimed affront. 'I'll have you know I keep detailed notes. Mistakes sometimes occur in translation.' 'Why do your notes need translating?' 'I write them in Aramaic. It's a three-­thousand-­year-­old language so I have to make up a lot of words.' 'But you change things around,' said Simon helplessly. 'The Leicester Square Vampire, for example. I've read at least three accounts of that particular investigation, all of them quite different.' 'That's because there's my version, the official version and the truth.' 'And you hold information back.' Simon raised his eyebrows and index finger to a waiter who, being French, ignored him. 'For example, why won't you admit your age to anyone?' 'Because at my age you only admit it to your doctor. It takes me so long to scroll down to my year of birth on computers that I start to wonder if they'll actually have it. Are you sure there's still a market for my memoirs?' 'Oh, absolutely,' said Simon with conviction. 'These are strange times, and readers need to be taken out of themselves.' 'I suppose in a world of clickbait and slut-­shaming my little anecdotes are charmingly anachronistic.' Bryant didn't actually know what those things were; he had heard someone at work mention them. Simon felt a frown furrowing his brain and fought it back. 'Then I dare say we'll soldier on with another volume if you can stand it. It was terribly unfortunate that your previous biographers had such rotten luck . . .' 'What with one being murdered, you mean,' said Bryant. Slouched back in his chair, he appeared about to vanish beneath the table. His fringe was white and vertical, his azure eyes as round as buttons. The editor felt as if he were having lunch with a teddy bear. 'Ah, the murder. That was a bit of a sticky wicket.' Simon caught the waiter's eye again and tried to magnetize him. 'None of us expected her to up stumps and retire to the pavilion like that. Still, the innings isn't over yet, is it?' 'We never played cricket at school,' said Bryant, who had hardly ever attended school, let alone played a competitive sport. 'Oh, right.' Simon assumed everyone had played for their county at least once, so Bryant's remark made no sense to him. 'I can't write the memoirs myself,' said Bryant. 'I tend to wander off.' 'We'll have to find you someone who can.' He returned to the safer ground of the wine list. 'They do a rather pleasing Crozes-­Hermitage here. Young but robust,' he added before realizing that his lunch companion was neither. The waiter finally dragged himself over and took the wine order. Bryant looked about while his editor discussed the wine in flawless French. The restaurant was a mahogany funeral parlour swathed in brocaded crimson curtains, dimly lit by art nouveau lamps. It served its steaks rare and its puddings well done, and if you didn't like it you probably went to a comprehensive school and jolly well needed to learn some manners. Simon tucked in his napkin immaculately but somewhat prematurely, an indication that he had attended a boarding school. 'I was wondering if you had a subject in mind for a follow-­up volume, something that would really raise your batting average? You must have a nice juicy crime up your sleeve, an investigation that you've never been able to talk about. One of those cases that took place in the days before psychological profiling or counselling.' He broke open a pensionable bread roll. 'If you can come to the crease with a first-­class game we might take the Ashes with this one.' 'Phones,' said Bryant, exploding his bread and swathing it in butter. 'I'm sorry?' 'You said "before psychological profiling or counselling." For us it was phones. They changed everything. Policing is about evidence. Finding out what's real or false, who's telling the truth, who's withholding information. Back in the 1970s we were taught to shout at crime-­scene bystanders: "Did anyone see what happened?" I don't need to tell you how that turned out. We used to rely on public requests, sightings, interviews, till receipts, bus tickets. As soon as people started using mobiles they left a trail wherever they went. We didn't have to trust hearsay any more. Before, we had to rely on finding a telephone box. Now we search online records.' 'Yes, but it's not terribly dramatic,' Simon pointed out, 'running through phone numbers on a screen.' 'It's still more interesting than life in the Met,' said Bryant cheerfully. 'Their crime scenes end up looking like film sets. Too many officers hanging around with nothing to do. The annual London murder rate is too low, always around the one hundred mark in a city that's heading for nine million residents. Pathetic. So naturally everybody wants to attend one. A lot of coppers never get the chance any more. It's like signing up for a safari expecting to see a lion roar and coming back having seen two monkeys and something scratching itself in a mud pool.' 'That's a good thing, though, isn't it? Surely one doesn't want murderers to score more than a century?' 'Knife culture has left every disenfranchised teenager with a chip on his shoulder thinking it's acceptable to carry one of these.' Bryant twanged his knife on the table for emphasis, making nearby diners look over. 'Stabbings are banal tragedies committed over trivialities. Even George Orwell bemoaned the declining quality of English murder.' Simon's brow knitted. 'But the Peculiar Crimes Unit specialized in cases liable to cause public disorder, no? Wasn't there ever an investigation that changed you, perhaps when you were younger?' He stared at his luncheon guest and tried to imagine what he had been like as a young man, but the effort was too demanding. 'Funnily enough I was thinking about one such case just the other day,' said Bryant. 'Although it was a bit of an oddity, even for us, and the outcome wasn't at all what anyone expected.' 'I wouldn't worry too much about that,' said Simon hopefully. 'I'm sure we can find a biographer who'll spice it up a bit, give our readers a bit more bang for their buck, so to speak.' 'That's not normally necessary. We've come across some killers who've made Titus Andronicus look like Rupert Bear. But now that I think back, this one did play out rather like an Agatha Christie novel.' 'Unguessable?' 'Unbelievable. Not that there's anything wrong with that. The beauty of Christie is that beneath all the rubbish about strychnine and vicars there's usually a simple unconscious truth.' Bryant's aqueous blue eyes searched the ceiling as he ransacked his memory. 'It was the sort of thing that could only have happened in the 1960s, when everything was less examined. We were young and naïve. There was so much that was new to us. By today's standards the situation was utterly absurd, of course. In those days we were academics, mainly working on abstract scenarios. If we'd been more experienced in the field and had taken everything a little more seriously, I imagine the outcome might have been different.' 'It sounds promising.' The wine arrived. 'Ah, Château Screwtop.' Simon gave a small wince of apology that said, Publishing margins are tight and you don't shift enough copies to warrant something with a cork. Bryant was oblivious. 'The investigation began and ended in a single weekend, although I suppose its roots went back further than that. It was at the end of the summer of 1969, an extraordinary time to be young. I dare say you recall that year . . .' For a brief moment Simon's naturally cheery face clouded. 'I'm not actually old enough, Mr Bryant.' 'Really?' Bryant peered closely at him. 'You do surprise me. You must be married. Of course it's hard to explain just how strange the sixties were to people who weren't around then. What is it they say? "If you can remember the sixties you weren't there." Mind you, I can't remember going to the barber's yesterday. I looked in the mirror this morning and got quite a shock.' 'I was just starting prep school,' said Simon helplessly. 'Back then I was not the wrinkled wreck you see before you,' Bryant continued, oblivious. 'I was young and lithe. Young, anyway. I've always been a tad portly.' He prodded his stomach with his knife. 'Luckily, waistcoats were fashionable. I had energy, zip, get-­up-­and-­go. It was a thrilling time to be alive. Everything was fresh; everything was new. I bought a kipper tie. I met a girl. I punched a capitalist. I smoked my first joint.' 'I think we can leave out that part,' said Simon. Bryant loosened a coil of his scarf and raised his hands as if framing a picture. 'Let me set the scene for you. Overnight the country went from monochrome to Technicolor, from austerity to abundance. The Rolling Stones. The Kinks. David Hockney. Mary Quant.' Excerpted from Bryant and May: Hall of Mirrors: A Peculiar Crimes Unit Mystery by Christopher Fowler All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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