Book Description
Product Description
Long regarded an anachronism and a thorn in the side of its superiors, the Peculiar Crimes Unit is to be disbanded. For octogenarian detectives Arthur Bryant and John May, it seems retirement is now the only option. But then a headless body is found in a freezer, and on the perimeter of a massive construction site near King's Cross, a gigantic figure has been spotted - dressed in deerskin and sporting antlers made of knives and suddenly, with limited resources and very little time, the PCU are back in business...
In the panoply of great fictional detective duos, Bryant & May rank alongside (and somewhere in between) Holmes & Watson and Mulder & Scully...
From the Inside Flap
Londoners are losing their heads...
Tracking down a murderer in King's Cross, one of the busiest meeting points in Britain, would be a nightmare for any police force. The discovery of a decapitated body in a shop freezer points to this being a case for the Peculiar Crimes Unit. However, the team has been disbanded and retirement seems the only option left for its elderly detectives, Arthur Bryant and John May. But then a second corpse is found. And again, it doesn't have a head.
Something decidedly strange is upsetting the area's property developers too. The mystical image of a forgotten legend - seemingly half-man, half-beast, covered in deer skin and sporting antlers made of knives - has begun stalking construction sites at night.
With limited resources and very little time, but freed from the system and on the loose, the nation's favourite octogenarian detectives and the PCU are back in business, searching for body parts and behaving disgracefully as they go in search of London's pagan secrets.
At the heart of the investigation lies the city's oldest mystery - who really owns London and its landscapes? As they close in on the truth, Bryant and May find they have made a very dangerous enemy indeed...
From the Back Cover
Praise for Christopher Fowler's Bryant & May mysteries:
'Quirky, touching, profound and utterly original.'
Peter James
'Slow burning, adroitly plotted, with a distinct atmosphere . . . goes against the grain of most detective fiction and is the better for it.'
Daily Telegraph
'One of the quirkiest and most ingenious pleasures to be found in the genre: atmospheric, sardonically funny and craftily suspenseful.'
amazon.co.uk
'Marvellous . . . these are really, really great reads.'
BBC Radio 4's 'Front Row'
'Invests the traditions of the Golden Age of detective fiction with a tongue-in-cheek post-modernism.'
Evening Standard
'Page-turning . . . bear all the hallmarks of the classic British mystery.'
Guardian
'An imaginative fun house . . . life always seems livelier whenever Arthur Bryant and John May are on the case.'
New York Times Book Review
'Fowler, like his crime-solvers, is dead-pan, sly and always unexpectedly inventive.'
Entertainment Weekly
