Full Dark House

Where I got the book: purchased on Amazon.

This was an interesting mystery set in London during the Blitz and also in the late 20th century. It didn't exactly have me on the edge of my seat, but neither did it make me want to stop reading. I liked the Bryant & May partnership despite the corny names (non-Brits: it's a brand of matches) and I thought that there were some nice quirks. In the end the whole thing was somewhat forgettable, but it passed the time and what's a whodunnit for?

Would I read another Bryant & May? Maybe, maybe not. I'm hovering somewhere between a 3.0 and a 3.5 on this one. ( )

I tried to read this book a few years ago and couldn't get into it, but this time it worked better for me. Detectives Bryant and May are thrown together in the Peculiar Crimes Department of the London police during the Blitz in 1940. The book opens with Bryant being blown up in a suspicious explosion when he's working late in about 2000. May's investigation takes him back to their first case, a series of macabre deaths in a theater where rehearsals of Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld are taking place. A surprise ending and fascinating characters; it helps to be familiar with the Offenbach piece. The book gets a little slow at times, but I do plan to read more in the series. ( )

Interesting interweaving of present and past as May reviews their first case during WW2 in order to figure out who just killed his partner Bryant by bombing the building housing their offices. Good twist to the ending. ( )

Christopher Fowler's 2003 mystery novel "Full Dark House," the first in his series of books featuring the unconventional detectives Arthur Bryant and John May, begins with Bryant's death in an explosion. Killing off one of the heroes in the first chapter of the first book hardly seems like the way to start a series, but in "Full Dark House," as in presumably the novels that follow, the unusual becomes the expected.

May, an old man as story opens, is determined to discover who killed his partner, and he suspects it has something to do with their very first case together, some 60 years previously, when the two very young men are put in charge of the Peculiar Crimes Unit of Scotland Yard. They would seem to be the intended scapegoats for crimes too difficult for more experienced police officers to solve.

The 1940 case involves an apparent phantom of the opera, a strange creature who picks off members of the cast of a new London musical production and then disappears, seemingly through walls. These murders continue even after Bryant and May are on the scene, virtually witnesses to the crimes they are supposed to be solving.

Every few chapters we return to the 21st century and May's investigation of his eccentric partner's death. How these very peculiar crimes, including a dancers who disappears from a locked room, are solved and everything set right again makes for amusing and suspenseful reading, and I am looking forward to reading some other Bryant and May adventures. ( )

I liked this book - likeable characters, and interesting mystery (or mysteries). The ending was a bit predictable, but than again, only if you paying attention. I also liked the setting, both the theater and during the Blitz of WWII.

I learned a lot about how regular people survived during this process - generally, books set in this period will often gloss over the horrors of the war. At times, I really felt that Britain wasn't going to win, even knowing how history turned out. Christopher Fowler did his research. ( )