In a mirror of these trying times, all the staff members of London’s Peculiar Crimes Unit are out of jobs in the opening of Christopher Fowler’s BRYANT & MAY ON THE LOOSE, the seventh in the series for the unorthodox detective duo, shuttered by the powers that be.
Both well beyond retirement age, Arthur Bryant find himself not knowing what to do other than work, so he becomes somewhat of a hermit, but John May’s seeing someone special. The two become partners again when not one, but two bizarre situations pop up. One is discovered when former constable Colin Bimsley, doing freelance construction work, finds a headless body in a freezer. The other occurs when former constable Meera Mangeshkar is slashed one night by “the stag-man.”
The stag-man? That’s the nickname bestowed upon the mysterious man covered in fur, with a bandit mask around his face and antlers fashioned from knife blades atop his head. Scooping up hapless ladies, he may be Fowler’s most bizarre creation yet. And for this series, that’s saying something.
Bryant and May determine this stag-man models himself after a pagan god, and aims to kill to stop the development of the King’s Cross area. With the government facing utter embarrassment, it has no choice but to let the PCU reassemble to do what it does best. One caveat: It’s granted no resources, meaning it has less tools at its disposal than Sherlock Holmes, complains Bryant, “and he was fictional!”
Despite May’s initial declaration that “This isn’t THE BLUES BROTHERS, we’re not getting the band back together,” that’s exactly what happens in ON THE LOOSE. Fans of the PCU wouldn’t have it any other way, and this novel is written expressly for them; it rewards longtime readers, so Fowler virgins need to jump aboard the early books, as this one references those past adventures and short-cuts reintroducing its colorful cast of characters.
As always, the mystery is rich, all but guaranteeing armchair detectives will be entrenched. Fowler’s impish sense of humor is another mainstay, with perhaps no better example than this choice line: “There are no entry wounds on the body so it must be on the missing part. Possibly head trauma, although we’ll have to find it first.”
The one thing that isn’t expected is ON THE LOOSE’s ending. Rather than wrapping things up tidily, Fowler takes a hard left, with a conclusion that’s intended to chill … and does. —Rod Lott
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• OLD DEVIL MOON by Christopher Fowler
• TEN SECOND STAIRCASE by Christopher Fowler
• THE VICTORIA VANISHES by Christopher Fowler
• THE WATER ROOM by Christopher Fowler
• WHITE CORRIDOR by Christopher Fowler
