BOOK REVIEW: Bryant and May on the Loose by Christopher Fowler

Review by David Stainton

Firstly, a confession: I had lost interest in the Bryant & May series after The Water Room. I don't know why, but that one felt like a bit of a slog. Maybe I wasn't in the right frame of mind, because On The Loose had me gripped from the start. 

Things don't get off to a good start - the Peculiar Crimes Unit has been forced to disband and it looks like the elderly detectives are on the scrap-heap and their team of misfits and oddballs will have to find 'proper' jobs. Thankfully it doesn't take long before (forgive me) a rather contrived way of reforming the team brings them all back together. That contrived way is a headless body in a freezer. Soon another corpse minus head turns up, again in the Kings Cross area. Then something - or someone - sinister emerges on the site of a new business and housing development which threatens the area, and, it soon becomes clear, the whole of London.

As usual, Fowler delivers a cohesive and fast-moving plot mixed with his trademark references to London past and present. Most of the action in this book centres around St Pancras Old Church, just two minutes from the international terminus, and this gives the author the chance to weave Boudicca, the Crow god Bran, the Green Man legend and even a legendary Beatles photo-shoot into the story. 

As ever, the irascible Bryant and practical May solve the case in their own eclectic manner, but not without cost to the Unit, and things don't get tied up quite as neatly as they plan, leaving the way open for another tale involving their nemesis. 

My personal experience of law enforcement leads me to have to suspend my disbelief about the way the PCU operates within the Met - probably more than the average reader, but I was pathetically excited when I read a reference to my employers in the book. Overall On The Loose is a return to form, and I will certainly be returning to the five B&M novels I've missed out on. Check out Christopher Fowler's informative website for photographs of some of the locations in the book as well.

Read as part of Transworld's Summer Reading Challenge. 

Comments

[Christopher Fowler]

Thanks for the kind words - I've tied up the loose ends to this tale in the sequel, 'Bryant & May Off The Rails'. I think it took me a while to find my form in the series, but I really feel that from the fourth book onwards I hit my stride. Having said that, it's amazing the different books readers have chosen as favourites -
Hopefully you'll enjoy the others.

[Keris]

Thanks so much for your comment, Christopher.