Christopher Fowler

Arthur Bryant, John May and the Peculiar Crimes Unit are on the trail of an enigma: a young man called Mr Fox. But his identity is false, his links to society are invisible and his home yields no clues. All they know is that somehow he escaped from a locked room and murdered one of their best and brightest.

As the nation's oldest serving detectives, we know more about London than almost anyone. After all, we've been walking its streets and impulsively arresting its citizens for decades. Who better to take you through its less savoury side? We'll be chatting about odd buildings, odder characters, lost venues, forgotten disasters, confusing routes, dubious gossip, illicit pleasures and hidden pubs. We'll be making all sorts of odd connections and showing you why it's almost impossible to separate fact from fiction in London.

In every detective's life there are cases that can't be discussed. This collection of Bryant & May stories not only sheds light on eleven previously unseen investigations but also contains everything you need to know about the two octogenarian detectives and the Peculiar Crimes Unit.

The odd couple of detection, the brilliant but cranky Arthur Bryant and John May of London's Peculiar Crimes Unit, return in a tense, atmospheric new thriller that keeps you guessing right to the end. This time the detectives are up against a series of bizarre murders that defy human understanding, and a killer no human hand may be able to stop.

A mysterious stranger in outlandish Edwardian garb defaces a painting in the National Gallery. Then a guest at the exclusive Savoy Hotel is fatally bitten by what appears to be a marshland snake. An outbreak of increasingly bizarre crimes has hit London, and, fittingly, come to the attention of the Peculiar Crimes Unit.

Christopher Fowler forays into the back catalogues of 99 authors who, once hugely popular, have all but disappeared from our shelves. These journeys are punctuated by 12 short essays about faded once-favourites, including the contemporary rivals of Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie who did not stand the test of time.