About
Reviews
Search
Submit
Home

Mystery Books for Sale

[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]


  

BRYANT AND MAY: OFF THE RAILS
by Christopher Fowler
Doubleday, June 2010
352 pages
16.99 GBP
ISBN: 0385614667


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

This is the first time I've met detectives Bryant and May, but although the author does a reasonable job of recapping what I later discovered were the events of the previous book in the series, which had led to the capture of the serial killer known as Mr Fox, I still felt that I wasn't fully up to speed with what had transpired earlier.

Mr Fox, a shadowy character, who has succeeded in breaking out of a holding cell and killing a young policeman, is not going to be easy to track. His identity is false, there are no photographs of him and even those who have met him find him hard to describe. His home provides no clues either, so his recapture poses a problem, even more so because the Peculiar Crimes Unit, to which Arthur Bryant and John May are attached, is threatened with closure if the killer is not apprehended by the end of the week. When a young woman inexplicably falls to her death in the London Underground, Bryant and May are convinced that Mr Fox has struck again. Their search for the murderer leads them into the strange world beneath the streets of London and their task is to run their quarry to earth before he kills again.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this book when I started reading. Bryant and May clearly have a lot of history behind them and I was left with a feeling that I'd come rather too late to this particular party. Whilst the story is intriguing and the characters are generally well drawn, I never really felt like I'd got to know Bryant and May properly and by the end of the book I was still having some difficulty in telling the two main characters apart. The parts I enjoyed the most were the descriptions of the subterranean world of tunnels beneath the capital that keep the commuters and tourists flowing like blood through its veins. The tales of long-abandoned stations and crumbling networks of disused stations are endlessly fascinating, as are the ghost stories and other strange tales that such places attract.

Fowler's use of language and his descriptive abilities kept me engaged through the labyrinthine twists and turns of the narrative but the denouement, when it finally came, left me feeling more than a little unsatisfied and still puzzled about the killer's motives, despite the explanations that inevitably seem to fill the final chapter of any crime novel. I'm still undecided about the Peculiar Crimes Unit and its staff, but on balance, Fowler writes skillfully enough for me to give them another chance. I might also have more success with a book that isn't so strongly linked to its predecessor in the series.

§ Linda Wilson is a writer, and retired solicitor, with an interest in archaeology and cave art, who now divides her time between England and France.

Reviewed by Linda Wilson, March 2011

[ Top ]


QUICK SEARCH:

 

Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]