To my mind Christopher Fowler is the great unsung hero of modern popular literature, which is a compliment – Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins were all popular writers, and Fowler fits well into their company. Christopher has written more than forty novels at this stage (I’ve read many of them, and none of them disappoint), and countless short stories, articles, as well as graphic novels, memoirs, and more. An impressive body of work, and with ‘Hall of Mirrors’, his quality shows no signs of flagging.
This latest Bryant and May book tells a tale featuring the detectives set in 1969 (mannn!). In some respects this story owes something to Agatha Christie – again, a compliment, there is good reason that we still read Dame Agatha while so many of her contemporaries are forgotten. Christie was a great storyteller always, something many writers forget fail to achieve. Here, Christopher Fowler adds all his own unique elements to the mix, and superb research.
Plus Bryant and May are superb characters. Christopher once told me he always thought of them as Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. So do I. Perhaps in some alternative reality they are.
Finally, a point I have made in previous reviews: why is there no Bryant and May TV series?
Published by Doubleday
