The Peculiar Crimes Unit

London’s Peculiar Crimes Unit is a special police force meant to handle cases that might involve national scandal or create public unrest but it seems these cases are also well…peculiar. In The Water Room it appears that a woman has drowned in a dry basement and in Seventy-seven Clocks the murder weapons are all quite different from a tiger to a bomb, then in Ten-second Staircase the murderer is disguised in a mask like a highwayman from the past.

The Peculiar Crimes Unit wouldn’t be complete without its own cast of eccentric detectives including the two lead detectives Arthur Bryant and John May. Bryant specializes in the arcane and secret societies or ancient myths while May is Bryant’s opposite with his head firmly in reality. They have been in the unit for decades and some in the police force think it’s time for their retirement, but it might be that Bryant and May are needed more than ever in Christopher Fowler’s Series Bryant and May.

This ever growing series with thirteen books begins with Full Dark House and continues with the latest book, Bryant and May and the Bleeding Heart. Each book is a mixture of a mystery and satire as the two detectives encounter lunatics, cults, academics gone bad, and venerable old families.