Bryant & May: Peculiar London

Thinking of a jaunt to England? Let Arthur Bryant and John May, London’s oldest police detectives, show you the oddities behind the city’s façades in this tongue-in-cheek travel guide.

“The best fun is running all over the city with these amiable partners.”—The New York Times Book Review, on Bryant & May: The Lonely Hour

It’s getting late. I want to share my knowledge of London with you, if I can remember any of it.

So says Arthur Bryant. He and John May are the nation’s oldest serving detectives. Who better to reveal its secrets? Why does this rainy, cold, gray city capture so many imaginations? Could its very unreliability hold the key to its longevity?

The detectives are joined by their boss, Raymond Land, and some of their most disreputable friends, each an argumentative and unreliable expert in their own dodgy field.

Each character gives us a short tour of odd buildings, odder characters, lost venues, forgotten disasters, confusing routes, dubious gossip, illicit pleasures, and hidden pubs. They make all sorts of connections—and show us why it’s almost impossible to separate fact from fiction in London.

Christopher Fowler is the acclaimed author of the award-winning Peculiar Crimes Unit mysteries: Full Dark House, The Water Room, Seventy-Seven Clocks, Ten Second Staircase, White Corridor, The Victoria Vanishes, Bryant & May on the Loose, Bryant & May off the Rails, The Memory of Blood, The Invisible Code, The Bleeding Heart, The Burning Man, Strange Tide, Wild Chamber, Hall of Mirrors, The Lonely Hour, Oranges & Lemons, and London Bridge Is Falling Down. In 2015 Fowler won the coveted Crime Writers’ Association Dagger in the Library Award in recognition for his body of work. He lives in London.