A nice fun read. Very engaging mix of detective and London history. I would have given it 5 stars but I found one of the "mysteries" to be contrived and kinda dumb. ( )

I used to love Christopher Fowler’s works – and I still do, just not as much as when he included the supernatural. I first met Bryant and May in Rune and loved them in Darkest Day; Soho Black and Disturbia were also good although lacking in the occult atmosphere of the first two.

The Peculiar Crimes Unit with its two ancient stars had lots of fans and I suspect Fowler wanted to encourage new readers who would eschew anything that smacked of ‘horror’ hence the reincarnation of the couple in a series of straight forward mysteries, of which this is the sixth.

Bryant sees a woman go into a pub late one night: the next day the woman turns up dead and the pub has vanished – it turns out it was demolished over 80 years previously. Is Bryant as senile as some say, or did he witness a supernatural event? Could there be another explanation?

There is: a serial killer is on the lose, targeting older single women in pubs throughout Greater London, and its up to Bryant and May to solve the mystery before the Peculiar Crimes Unit is closed down forever. If this sounds familiar, it’s because much the same scenario occurs in almost every one of the new series.

Despite their acting head [of at least a decade] Raymond Land doing his best to keep the Unit open, the offices are closed but the octogenarian pair move operations to Bryant’s flat where, with the help of the indefatigable sergeant Janice Longbright and John May’s agoraphobic daughter April they solve the puzzle.

A good read and excellently written with Fowler’s trademark love of London and mastery of its lore, yet something is missing, that quirky, spine-tinglingly fascinating flirtation with the occult, the sense of lurking dread and real danger that literally haunted them in some of their earlier investigations. ( )

A woman is killed outside a pub, but then the pub disappears. What happened to it? Why are single women in bars being killed? The Peculiar Crimes Unit is on the case. A very enjoyable read. ( )

Is the name of the Peculiar Crimes Unit based on the type of crime or the method of detection - or maybe the personality quirks of John May and Arthur Bryant? No matter - these two old cronies never fail to intrigue!

I listened to this an an audio book, downloaded from Audible.com. Read excellently by Tim Goodman, the book lasts for a little over 10 hours. The printed version was published in 2008.

I've always been a little put off by a the idea of a series featuring detectives called Bryant & May with connotations of boxes of matches (I couldn't resist the temptation of the image).

Someone is murdering women in London pubs, and the story comes in several parts. The first part reveals a series of four murders in separate pubs. But the first happened in a pub called The Victoria Cross, closed for over 50 years. If Arthur Bryant hadn't seen the victim go into the pub himself, then she would have just been a dead person on a street corner. But what has happened to the Victoria?

Old fashioned detecting by the Peculiar Crimes Unit identifies the murderer, but where to find him? And why did he do it?

#6 in the Bryant & May series, this is a fascinating novel.
Arthur Bryant is geriatric, possibly losing his memory, and should be retired. So should his partner, John May. But they bring to the unit an old fashioned meticulous investigating, and their clear up rate is the best in London.
The Peculiar Crimes Unit is a very interesting band of people. In this novel they have been joined by a new sergeant who is determined to make the idiosyncratic members of the unit toe the line, behave by the rules more. I enjoyed both the detailed descriptive passages, and meeting all the members of the unit.

The structure of the book is worth thinking about too.
About half way through it appears that the story is over.
What else can there be to talk about? And then the page turns, figuratively speaking, and you discover that the capture of the murderer was just the first part. Fowler swings you into the next phase, a shocking relevation of what lies behind the murders, and then again you are brought to a climax, to find that all is not yet finished!

This is a series I will really be reading more of. I'll try to remember the name of the narrator Tim Goodman too. He does an excellent job. ( )