Getting a new Bryant & May mystery is a drop-everything-else affair. Over the past few years, with very little fanfare, Christopher Fowler’s series on the British senior-citizen detective duo quietly has shaped itself into the most original and imaginative mystery franchise on shelves today.

As their fifth adventure WHITE CORRIDOR opens, Bryant & May find their Peculiar Crimes Unit being shut down for a week for improvements, so they utilize the opportunity – Bryant willingly, May reluctantly – to attend a spiritualists convention. Snowy travel conditions, however, strand them in a blizzard so bad it’s downright life-threatening.

Also held hostage by the winter weather are a young woman and her son. Having recently left her abusive husband, she’s now on the run from an initially charming man they met, whom she believes to a serial killer of women.

Meanwhile, tragedy strikes back at PCU with the death of one of their own on the very premises. In a fashion typical of such scenarios, the passing looks accidental at first glance, but evidence eventually suggests foul play, thus giving way to a locked-room mystery.

Fowler does an admirable job of drawing readers along all tracks, which eventually converge into an expectation-subverting conclusion. In fact, those accustomed to Bryant & May’s exploits of the past may find their entire reading experience a bit thrown.

See, with WHITE CORRIDOR, Fowler shakes things up from the norm, in that our codgers aren’t the focal point this go-round. For most of the book, they’re literally stuck in a car, forced to do any and all investigation and peer interaction via cell phone. For another thing, the crimes in this entry aren’t so peculiar – a dead body in the office is far less eccentric than, say, inexplicable drownings or costumed vigilantes.

But what at first seems slightly off pays off, with Fowler rather ingeniously pulling the proverbial rug out from under us, and on more than one plot thread. His protagonists’ trademark sly humor, however, remains delightfully intact. And with that a given, there’s little room nor need to complain; WHITE CORRIDOR will please Bryant & May fans, if only after deliberately knocking them off their guard. –Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS SERIES:
• TEN SECOND STAIRCASE by Christopher Fowler
• THE WATER ROOM by Christopher Fowler