(Bryant & May Book 10) (Bryant and May) - Bryant & May and the Invisible Code

thought it would be original, but to me, characters were not as colourful as author wanted them to seem
plot doesn't really hang together, a few good insights and nice turns of phrase, but very disappointed

The book was a cut above other mystery novels. Prose was much better, plot was interesting and of course the anti-establishment theme was like a Holmes novel. Sometimes dragged a bit but overall a great read!

with his wonderful cast of characters falling all over themselves in modern day London, yet solving the crime. Arthur Bryant is a particularly compelling person. Peculiar as they all are, they are fast becoming my friends. I read this in a day and then went right to the store and bought another Fowler PCU book. I was relived to see they are many more to choose from.

This was my first Peculiar Crimes Unit book and I loved it. I can say enough good things about the author, Christopher Fowler's storytelling and great use of the English language. The mysteries are not fluff, but serious crimes but the way Fowler tells them are full of great characterization, description and fun. Read one and you will see how great they are.

Christopher Fowler's knowledge of arcane London history is a fascinating part of this series of books. This information is always germane to the quirky paths by which our "long since past retirement age" detectives find their men (or women). I always look forward to the nwest book!!!

Once again I was disappointed when the book ended. I hope Christopher Fowler is hard at work writing another Peculiar Crimes story featuring Bryant and May. I never get tired of them because they never get old - every one is a fresh, funny, insightful cliff-hanger, and The Invisible Code is no exception.

I thought the title sounded interesting plus I had read a positive review of it in the NYTimes. I thought the plot was disjointed and the idea of witches committing the crime was sort of foisted onto the plot. I don't care to read any more of the series. Not my cup of tea.

I love Christopher Fowlers' Bryant & May series, and only wish they could be written more quickly. Each book is an absolute delight - full of quirky characters - not the least of whom is Bryant - and wonderful information about a London that is hidden to most of us.

Received the book from England sooner than I thought it would arrive! Think I might just order the future Peculiar Crimes Unit mysteries from the UK. Love the cover, different from US releases. This book, "Bryant & May and The Invisible Code", is apparently not yet available here in US. Was published in UK 2012.

In the churchyard of London's St. Bride's Church, a young woman sits reading until, driven away by the annoyance of two young children, she enters the church's nave. Minutes later, she collapses and dies. The children report that they were playing a game of "witch hunter" and put a curse on her that killed her.

When the autopsy fails to identify a specific cause of death, Arthur Bryant of the Home Office's Peculiar Crimes Unit naturally wants the case. But the Metropolitan Police have jurisdiction and the PCU, being persona non grata in the Home Office, lack the power to take over.

Certainly their enemy-in-chief, the satanic Oscar Kasavian, isn't about to lift a finger to help them. He has vowed to wipe out the PCU and, particularly its beyond-retirement-age leads, Arthur Bryant and John May. Imagine Bryant and May's surprise, then, when Kasavian almost humbly asks them to help him with a problem involving his young wife.

As Bryant and May and the rest of the PCU team begin to investigate, the case takes on ever larger proportions. Government corruption, whistleblowers in private industry, mental illness and its history in London, private clubs, Russian gangsters, codes and ciphers and the supernatural are all thrown into the heady mix. On top of all that, there are disquieting revelations of how the British class system, cronyism and the complete disregard of commercial/government conflicts of interest conspire to ensure that a cabal of venal and ruthless men stay in power in British government.

But this is no grim, deadly serious police procedural. With the PCU, that's just not possible. Arthur Bryant is the absent-minded fellow with his latest meal evidenced down the front of his clothes and his cell phone made unusable by the melted sweets on it. He can't understand why people take exception to his conducting experiments at home and in the office involving things like pig carcasses and explosives. John May is Bryant's opposite: sartorially impeccable, careful to massage egos when necessary and a believer that the simplest answer is usually the right one. Despite their vast differences, Bryant and May make an effective team and, as always, they go right down to the wire in their investigation.

This tenth book in the Peculiar Crimes Unit series is notable for its use of London settings in the story. Descriptions of churches, museums, streets and history bring the city alive. This was a particularly satisfying story, one of my absolute favorites in the series. I laughed aloud several times but, as always with this series, I learned a lot and I was touched by the very human members of the team and the people they deal with.

This book can be read as a standalone, but I would suggest that at the very least, you read the previous book, The Memory of Blood: A Peculiar Crimes Unit Mystery (Peculiar Crimes Unit Mysteries), first. There are certain plot issues that come out of that book and it will make The Invisible Code that much more satisfying to know about them. Best of all, though, would be to read the whole series from the beginning, starting with Full Dark House: A Peculiar Crimes Unit Mystery.

One final mystery, though. The book is out in the UK, but as of September, 2012, there is no publication date listed in the US. However, you can get the audiobook from Audible. That's what I did and I can highly recommend it. The narrator, Tim Goodman, is wonderful. His voice for Arthur Bryant is dead-on perfection.

I started reading this book based on the premise, which sounded intriguing, and the blurbs, which praised it to the hilt. But I gave up reading after fifty pages, because the story hadn't even started yet. Exposition is fine, but fifty pages of wandering around in circles isn't worth one's time. The characters are the opposite of cardboard, they're over-the-top burlesque, as though Benny Hill were doing a police procedural. The basic premise, that of a special police unit that investigates only truly bizarre crimes, is still intriguing. Fowler's writing, however, is not.

When a young woman dies unexpectedly in a church and the coroner deems the death suspicious, Arthur Bryant, an inspector in the Peculiar Crimes Unit, wants the case. But their unit is dying of the not-so-benign neglect of Oskar Kasavian, head of security at the Home Office. Kasavian hates the PC Unit in general and Bryant and his partner John May in particular. When Kasavian sends for the partners, the elderly pair fears it will be the end for their unit.

To their astonishment, their boss and bête-noir asks for their help. His beautiful young trophy wife has been behaving very oddly, embarrassing her husband in public. He fears that she may be having a nervous breakdown, and wants them to discover her problem. He was recently named to an important international post, and needs to have the situation resolved before talking up his new position. Bryant accepts, as long as they can also have the case of the death in the church, which has been making his intuition itch.

From Bedlam to Bletchley Park, St. Bride’s Church to a white witch, the two old Luddite partners scramble to solve these disparate cases that turn out to be - surprise - connected. In retrospect there were a few hints, but they went right over my head, so the denouement came as a complete surprise to me. There was quite a bit of low-key humor in this particularly British mystery, which should please other lovers of the genre. I had read only one other book in this series, quite long ago; but will go back and hunt up previous offerings based on my pleasure in this one.

The Peculiar Crimes Unit of the London Police tackles the odd crime, solving them, much to the dismay of the Home Office and other branches. Pretty much a self-contained unit, the leading characters include Arthur Bryant, an intuitive detective and a relatively old throwback to former times, pretty much untouched by modern technology, and his partner, John May, staid and logical. They all, however, act as a team.

This latest episode (it is the tenth in the series) begins when a young woman is followed by two young children playing a game, trying to identify a "witch," and annoying her. So she leaves a park bench where she was eating her lunch and enters a church where she suddenly keels over and dies. Bryant wants to pursue the case but the chief of security at the Home office looking to eliminate the Unit forbids it. Then the chief's wife starts acting oddly, and the chief asks Bryant and May to quietly investigate the reasons for her behavior. And one thing leads to another.

The novel is a British mystery with many a twist. To begin with, Bryant is as conversant with the occult as he is with investigative techniques. The plot is really unlike anything else this reviewer has read, combining the elements of a traditional murder mystery with, essentially, witchcraft and the supernatural. The characters are well portrayed. And the twists and turns keep the reader interested right up to the final pages.

Recommended.

This, the tenth Peculiar Crimes Unit Mystery to appear in print, is the first I’ve read but it won’t be the last. (The Memory of Blood, 2012, was the most recent.) So good a mystery is this book that I’ve already ordered all of the past mysteries I can get from my local library.

They’re billed as Bryant and May mysteries, after the two sharpest minds in the Unit, but this book at least is almost all Bryant and very little May, who serves principally as his older, more eccentric partner’s foil in unraveling a tricky mystery that starts out almost a non-crime and steadily grows until by the end, the detectives are racing against the clock to foil a multi-partied conspiracy that threatens the nation’s wellbeing.

The Invisible Code is proof positive that old-style Golden Age puzzle mysteries can still be constructed and will be enjoyed by readers. Bryant is an elderly codger who refuses to be put out to pasture. His transparently false teeth click distractingly and he sheds detritus wherever he walks. (The Crime Scene Manager for the unit hates to see Bryant appear at murder scenes because he contaminates the evidence. He relates the story of how one time he was busy cataloguing brown droppings that appeared all over the room in which a murder had occurred. Belatedly he realizes that Bryant is moving around the room with a cup of cocoa in his hands and scattering drops of liquid everywhere. Later in the book, May describes Bryant’s sartorial style as “Post-war Care Home Jumble Sale” and describes the way Bryant’s brain works as “a sort of intelligent threshing machine. It chews up bits of information and spits them back out in a different order. They should pickle it when you die.”)

Everyone hates the Unit because they make the other crime fighters look bad by solving unsolvable crimes and the others can’t. This time, Bryant and May are given the opportunity to insure the Unit’s continued existence when they are asked to look into the erratic behavior of a highly placed and influential bureaucrat’s wife. Separately, a woman is found dead in a church with no apparent cause of death and though it’s not the Unit’s charge to look into deaths in London, Bryant wants to. More deaths follow. Things grow curiouser and curiouser before anything is resolved, and there is a last minute rush to resolve a heinous crime. On the way, they pick up a white witch and then a not-so white witch to help them resolve the case and Bryant delves into the history of thirteenth-century England but won’t tell any of his colleagues why.

(On the white witch, Maggie Armitage, the author comments: “What she lacked in logic she made up for in a kind of deranged effervescence that sometimes shed light into penumbral corners.”)

Like the classic Golden Age detective mysteries, crime is an arcane business here: nobody dies during a smash and grab; there are no deaths by anything so mundane as bludgeoning. But though the links in the chain from cause to effect (several deaths occur in the process) are exotic, they do follow logically, or semi-logically, link to link. It’s FUN to follow them and fun to read about this group of highly individual, exceedingly quirky but decidedly human, detectives.

Anecdotes told in passage throughout the book—just aides really --are often priceless. Here’s one about Bryant, by far the most eccentric though also the most successful member of the Unit. He tries to recruit a coroner to play on his bowling team the following weekend. His team was almost barred from playing this year because of problems the year before. "He had fielded a team of anger management outpatients to play … against a group of Metropolitan Police psychotherapists. The outpatients had proven to be poor losers. One of them had tried to make a psychotherapist eat his shoes before knocking him unconscious with a bowling pin."

He tells the coroner they’ll meet before the game “for warm-up drinks at the Nun and Broken Compass.” Dry wit, a puzzling mystery that grows more and more expansive as the detectives investigate, and engaging and idiosyncratic characters –it’s a formula for solid reading pleasure.

Fowler’s comic puzzler reminds me somewhat of Colin Watson (e. g., Hopjoy Was Here, 1962) or of Colin Dexter’s delightful Inspector Morse mysteries. Earlier, there are also Michael Innes’s wild Inspector Appleby mysteries. But among today’s mystery writers Fowler is pretty much sui generis, and a book like this deserves a wide readership.

Our two elderly heroes, London Detectives Arthur Bryant and John May, with their Peculiar Crimes Unit, (PCU), are back in their 10th adventure. As their name suggests, the PCU is tasked with solving Peculiar Crimes using peculiar investigative tactics

Bryant is the curmudgeon; unconventional, eschewing technology and "progress". He has the air of the eccentric, absent minded professor about him - if you are familiar with the TV show The Big Bang Theory, he could be Sheldon's grandfather. He can also be laugh-out-loud funny

May is somewhat brooding as well as dapper, who still has an eye for the ladies and they for him. He smoothes over the waves Bryant constantly leaves in his wake, and has a droll sense of humor. These books disprove the adage that getting older means getting boring.

The rest of the PCU team - a group of loveable misfits, each with their own idiosyncrasies - is a strong supporting cast. While crime-solving the PCU is also constantly fighting for its very existence - The British Home Office looking for any reason to close down what they perceive as an expensive and archaic operation. Yet this group of unlikely crime-stoppers muddles through and consistently gets "results".

Because of their success, in this book Bryant and May are called in personally by their in-house Home Office boss/nemesis. Their task, to find out and deal with what is haunting said boss' much younger and "foreign" wife - who is causing much public and political turmoil with her "behavior". Although loathing both their "client" and the assigned task, our two heroes accept - with the caveat that they can also "look into" a seemingly unrelated case - the mysterious death of a young woman in a church.

And maybe not as quickly as the reader would hope - we spend a little too much time with the troubled political wife - but soon enough - the story/mystery becomes a blend of The Da Vinci Code, espionage and political hi-jinx and conspiracies. Fans of this series will not be disappointed - all the quirks, twists, turns and humor we associate with this author/series are here.

If you are new to the PCU mysteries I would suggest starting with one of the earlier books. There are some general assumptions made concerning the PCU situation and characters - similar to the Reginald Hill Dalziel/Pascoe books - that may be missed or at least unappreciated - starting with the "angst" of our heroes working with/for their boss. Also the PCU team plays a minor role here.

Regardless an entertaining addition to an excellent series.

What a wonderful beginning, indicative of the wit through-out the book. It's a staff Bulletin from Raymond Land, PCU (Peculiar Crimes Unit) Unit Chief, London, dated Monday June 18: "As you know, we now have a fully activated secure swipe-card entry system on the front door. It worked perfectly for two whole days, until Arthur Bryant accidentally inserted an old Senior Service Battle of Britain cigarette card into the slot instead of his electronic keycard....
When the fire inspector came to test the smoke detector in the first floor corridor last week, he found a box of Bryant & May matches wedged in place of the alarm battery. Obviously only a disturbed, selfish and immature individual would risk burning his colleagues alive in order to smoke a pipe indoors....
I want to put the rumours to rest about our new building for once and for all.... The building is most emphatically not 'haunted.' It's an old property with a colourful history, and has Victorian pipes and floorboards. The noises these make at night are quite normal and certainly don't sound like the 'death rattles of trapped souls,' as I overheard Meera telling someone on the phone. May I remind you that you are British officers of the law, and are not required to have any imagination."

From this introduction, into an intriguing Chapter 1. Young Lucy and Tom are stuck trying to occupy their time. They had to tag along with their dads working on a Saturday near St. Bride's church, Fleet Street. Lurking around the square in front of the church, they play "The Game". They are witchhunting, trying to decide which adult is a witch. They settle on Amy O'Connor, because she's sitting on a bench reading "Rosemary's Baby". After a thorough investigation of the seated woman (how thorough we don't find out until later), the kids follow Amy into the church. Amy thinks to herself, "I am going to suffer. This is all wrong. I can't die before knowing the truth." And then she slowly tips from her chair and dies.

Arthur Bryant is on the case. "He was, everyone agreed, an annoying, impossible and indispensable fellow who had a long ago decided that it was better to be disliked than forgotten. And over the coming week, he would find himself annoying some very dangerous people."

Actually, PCU is not supposed to be on the case, because it's City of London jurisdiction. But Bryant finagles post mortem details from the pathologist, Fenchurch, assuring Fenchurch he'll tell no one but John May (his PCU partner in crime), and "he's not a friend, he's the other half of my brain."

In Chapter 10 (out of 50) we find out to what "The Invisible Code" refers. It's the silent compact among the rich and well-connected. They matter. The rest of us don't. And they don't have to tell us, including the police, a thing.

From there, the plot becomes seemingly hopelessly convoluted, though in Christopher Fowler's masterful hands, it does all come together in the end. I really like Fowler's clever writing, convoluted plotting, wit, fascinating historical details and his two irascible elderly protagonists. This is a 4.6 star book for me, rounded up to 5. The partial star off is for the length, the occasional wordiness. Sometimes there's a little too much rumination, though, in Fowler's defense, the ruminations are often where you get historical tidbits.

Recommended reading, unless you require a mystery to have the pace of a thriller!

I am reviewing from the Advance Uncorrected Proof.

Happy Reader

The London Metropolitan police's Peculiar Crimes Unit has investigated many a strange event and dealt with diverse unusual people in its career extending back to the 1940s, but this case may be the strangest yet: their adversarial and bullying superior, Oskar Kasavian, who persists in trying to shut the unit down, has asked them to investigate his young wife Sabira, who is showing signs of paranoia. Is someone really following her, or is she suffering from hallucinations due to drugs? And if the PCU comes to the bottom of what's going on, will the hostile Kasavian really keep his promise to re-instate the unit permanently?

I have been reading the PCU novels since 2010 and find them marvelously enjoyable, especially the series' main protagonists, elderly detectives Arthur Bryant, a disheveled turtle of a man whose nonlinear thinking usually turns the trick, and the more urbane and dapper John May, who follows the rules and smooths the way. The rest of the unit is an oddball combination of persistent individuals, including Janice Longbright, who favors the fashion styles of the 1950s, and Colin Bimsley, a staid sort with spatial difficulties. Colin and his partner Meera aren't given much to do in this outing except for one sequence, but everyone else shines in an investigation that attracts more red herrings than a fish run. It also starts out a bit slowly albeit with an intriguing teaser (two bored children "hunting witches"--and the woman that they pinpoint suddenly dies), but soon the game is truly afoot.

As with any PCU book, you also learn a good deal about some bit of London lore; this time it's the connection between Christian churches and their pagan forebears. Not to mention a secret about Crippen, the unit's pet cat. If you like your mysteries tangled and your narrative spiced with humor, this is a nice solid entry in the Peculiar Crime Unit series.

This is the tenth in the BRYANT AND MAYS (PECULIAR CRIMES UNIT) series of mysteries.

The Peculiar Crimes Unit is assigned those cases that are a bit unusual, ones that have a high likelihood of causing embarrassment. The PCU has an impressive success rate but lately other departments have been taking their cases, leaving the eccentric crew at loose ends, and once again in danger of being shut down.

There is a strong comic element to this series but it by no means a typically fluffy comic mystery. The puzzles set before the PCU are challenging, fairly laid out for the reader to follow, and even though paranormal activity is mentioned it does not truly enter into these stories. There is though, a very strong overall story arc to this series so do begin at the start of the series and proceed in order.

For me, ever since I began reading Sherlock Holmes as a boy, English mysteries have been the acme of the genre. The Invisible Code is a case in point.

Not your typical detective whodunit, this book is filled with quirky characters, false and dead ends, tangential storylines, historical information and an intricate and interwoven plot which involves two seemingly unconnected crimes. There are violent murders and exciting vehicle chases, and yet they are understated in a typically British way, as opposed to the hyperbolic type of action found all too often in American mysteries. There is even an intriguing touch of the supernatural represented by two of the most fascinating characters, Miss Armitage and Mr. Merry, who are crucial to solving the case and yet here too English sensibility distills them down to a subtle strangeness, and in Mr. Merry's case an ephemeral malevolence, that evades most American authors who deal with the same subjects. The lead detectives, May and Bryant are older [in Bryant's case just plain old] and they make mistakes, yet I found them delightfully interesting and really enjoyed the sarcastic humor the author employs so well in their conversations.

This is the most recent of a series of books and I have not read any of the others [though that will change] and yet I had no problem quickly getting up to speed with the characters and the context, which is another compliment to the author's talents. Were there any weak points? Sure, but they were few and far between and really don't take away from the pleasure of reading this novel. I highly recommend this book for any fan of the intellectual mystery story- they will find it hard to put it down.

Detectives Bryant and May of the Peculiar Crimes Unit are called in to investigate when a young woman is found dead in a church. There is no obvious cause of death, so they have to decide whether this was murder - or was she the victim of some spooky supernatural...er...something. Meantime, their boss and archenemy Oskar Kasavian asks them to help find out why his wife seems to be going mad - because that's always something you would ask the police to look into, isn't it? Psychics, shades of Bedlam, and witch-hunters - just a normal day for Bryant and May...

This is most definitely a book that requires the reader to check her disbelief at the door. The plot is...well...I tried to think of a politer word, but 'ridiculous' is the most appropriate. Is there a supernatural theme or isn't there? I genuinely have no idea. It's hinted at throughout but never confirmed. And the anachronisms! If we were to date the book purely on the characterisation, we'd have to assume we were in the 1950s, but the technology makes it clear we're supposed to be in the present day. So the idea that all top civil servants are male, that their wives don't work and meet up weekly in Harrods for afternoon tea...again, ridiculous.

In the afterword, the author says that he was 'determined to create a pair of intelligent Golden Age detectives who are forced to deal with the modern world.' Hmm...intelligent, I grant you. In fact, Bryant appears to have as encyclopaedic a knowledge of London as Holmes did, and the descriptions of some of the less well-known places are one of the main interests of the book. Golden Age? Well, they're old - but most of the Golden Age detectives of my experience tended to rule out supernatural causes. And modern world - the only concession to modernity is that they all have mobile phones. Otherwise even Poirot would have felt at home in this mid-20th century society.

However, so long as the reader doesn't expect the book to make any sense or have any basis in the real world, it's a fairly enjoyable light-hearted read. Bryant and May are likeable characters, and there's quite a lot of mild humour in the book. The writing is good, particularly of the spooky bits even though these didn't really make sense or go anywhere in the end. This is my first Bryant and May and, while it was fairly enjoyable overall, it wouldn't encourage me to read the rest of the series. But, looking at some of the other reviews, the series seems to have a dedicated and loyal following and several reviewers suggest this one isn't up to the usual standard; so I would be reluctant to write off the whole series on the basis of this one book, and may try an earlier one at some point. 3½ stars for me, so rounded up to 4.

NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Random House.

This latest tale of the Peculiar Crimes Unit begins in the churchyard of St. Bride's. On a bench sits a young woman, reading a book, while two children play nearby. When they annoy her, she goes into the quiet and deserted church. The children, who are playing a game called Witch Hunter, stealthily follow her in, because one of them is convinced that she is a witch. Minutes later, the woman keels over, dead. The children believe that the witch-killing curse they cast on her did its job.

When the autopsy fails to identify a specific cause of death, Arthur Bryant, the nuttier half of the Bryant & May team and co-leader of the Peculiar Crimes Unit, naturally wants the case. But the City of London police have jurisdiction and the PCU, being personae non gratae in the Home Office, lack the political backing to muscle them aside.

Certainly their enemy-in-chief, that satan in a three-piece suit, Oscar Kasavian, isn't about to lift a finger to help them. He has promised to wipe out the PCU and, particularly, its beyond-retirement-age leads. Imagine Bryant and May's surprise, then, when Kasavian almost humbly asks them to help him with a problem involving his wife, Sabira.

Sabira is much younger than Kasavian, an émigré from a working-class family in Albania. She's finding it trying to be the wife of someone whose job is full of secrets, and has begun thinking she is being stalked and threatened. She is depressed and volatile. Sabira is also habitually and cruelly taunted by the mean-girl sorority of wives of Home Office top-level bureaucrats.

Bryant and May are hardly thrilled by what they see as essentially a baby-sitting job and a no-win assignment but, as they and the rest of the PCU team begin to investigate, the case takes on ever larger proportions. Government corruption, whistleblowers in private industry, mental illness and its history in London, private clubs, Russian gangsters, codes and ciphers and the supernatural are all thrown into the heady mix. On top of all that, there are disquieting revelations of how the British class system, cronyism and the complete disregard of commercial/government conflicts of interest conspire to ensure that a cabal of venal and ruthless men stay in power in British government.

But this is no grim, deadly-serious police procedural. With the PCU, that's just not possible. Arthur Bryant is the absent-minded fellow with his latest meal evidenced down the front of his clothes, his cell phone made unusable by the melted sweets on it, and a brain that defines nonlinear. He can't understand why people take exception to his conducting experiments at home and in the office involving things like pig carcasses and explosives. John May is Bryant's opposite: sartorially impeccable, careful to massage egos when necessary, and a believer that the simplest answer is usually the right one.

Despite their vastly different thought processes, Bryant and May make an effective team and, as always, they go right down to the wire in their investigation. I was listening to the book while walking and was so riveted by the book's last chapters that I walked a lot further than I'd intended. (Note new marketing ploy for audiobooks: So enthralling that you won't even notice you're exercising while listening!)

Most modern police procedurals remind us how reliant current investigations are on database searches, GPS, phone and internet records, forensics and all the accoutrements of our technological age. Bryant and May operate in our world, but their methods are refreshingly old-fashioned. You will never have to read about establishing time of death by analyzing the life cycles of maggots, for example. Arthur Bryant may find some other way to gross you out, but you'll be laughing at the same time. Christopher Fowler knows the power of telling a good, entertaining story and not gumming it up with attempts to show that he is knowledgeable about all the latest gadgetry and techniques (that will all be hopelessly outdated in about five minutes anyway).

Like so many of the books in the Peculiar Crimes Unit series, this one is also notable for its use of London settings in the story. Fowler tells us that St. Bride's Church is known as the journalists' church because of its location on Fleet Street, traditional home of London newspapers. It sits in the oldest part of London, known also as the Square Mile, or the City of London, which is still a city in its own right, and has its own Lord Mayor---who, by the way, is NOT Boris Johnson, the flamboyant blond Mayor of London we saw during the 2012 summer Olympics. The City is also home to the legal community's Inns of Court, which also play a dramatic part in the story, along with Sir John Soane's Museum, across from Lincoln's Inn Fields and home to Hogarth's painting, A Rake's Progress.

Fowler's descriptions of churches, museums, streets and history bring the city alive. He clearly loves London, especially its hidden places, like alleyways, back passages of old buildings and tunnels. If you're fascinated by London, too, you might want to spend some time visiting Christopher Fowler's blog, especially this London walk [...] or this post about London on film [...]

If you're already a fan of the PCU series, I can give you a preview of what's coming up, courtesy of Fowler's blog. He wrote last year that this latest book wrapped up a story arc and he solicited ideas to help him solidify his ideas about where to go next. Here's his conclusion:

"One of these [next two novels] will definitely feature an incapacitated Bryant and lots of old cases in the course of uncovering a new one, while the other book will be pretty sinister and dark-themed.

Plus, more eccentric characters, strange bits of London, oddments of history, arcana, sleuthing, impossible murder and general weirdness. Oh, and something impossible happening in the ultimate locked room, the Tower of London."

I can hardly wait.

The tenth installment in Christopher Fowler's Bryant and May series is the first I've read, but it won't be the last. There are a few references to what I assume are earlier adventures, but this tale of mysterious, possibly supernatural death and political-class intrigue stands alone. It builds on one of the classic tropes of the detective story, the hiring of the hero by the enemy because the enemy has nowhere else to turn. Here "the enemy" is Oskar Kasavian, the thoroughly contemptuous supervisor of Bryant and May's Peculiar Crimes Unit, who needs help with his wife. Sabira Kasavian is convinced that someone is conspiring against her. Is this merely a delusion? If not, then who is responsible, and how does it all relate to the mysterious death of Amy O'Connor, who collapsed in a London church with no apparent cause?

As a mystery THE INVISIBLE CODE is well-paced, with enough different narrative strands and suspenseful moments to keep things lively and divert readers from predicting what is, in hindsight, a fairly obvious resolution. But the book's best features are matters of character and theme rather than plot. The eccentricities of the elderly detectives are themselves an old-fashioned form of humor, but Fowler delivers it deftly enough, and uses it sparingly enough, that it works. And his knowledge of odd bits of historical trivia is more than a valuable source of red herrings: it provides a richness of milieu that lifts the novel above traditional detective story matter. Not that there's anything wrong with traditional detective story matter. In fact, the awareness of class and privilege that has always enlivened great detective fiction is especially relevant today, and THE INVISIBLE CODE is informed by an awareness of the gap between London's fashionable, driven elite and the people who live around but not among them. That awareness isn't overwhelming-- this isn't a "heavy" novel-- but it's not a pure diversion either. It is, instead, an all-around accomplished hybrid of the thoughtful and the entertaining. If the rest of the series is this enjoyable, I have a lot of pleasant reading ahead of me.

The most unusual crime-solving partnership EVER has to be the team of Bryant and May, two members of the Greatest Generation who, long past the age of retirement, continue to investigate cases that cross the desk of the Peculiar Crimes Unit.

You don't have to read these books in order, but you should probably first experience at least one of the earlier installments to get the lay of the land. (And not just Raymond! Inside joke.) No matter where you start, though, you'll quickly become addicted to the series.

Christopher Fowler is really funny, in that dry, self-deprecating British way. But he doesn't shy away from violence (a baby was thrown to his death from a window in the beginning of the previous PCU book), and his books are full of interesting information that seems too bizarre to be true...but is.

In this book, Bryant and May's boss--who doesn't like them and has been trying to get rid of the PCU for years--is compelled to enlist their help with his wife, who is behaving strangely. Naturally, getting to the bottom of Mrs. Kasavian's problems (paranoia? blackmail?) involves lots of plot twists and plenty of opportunities for dapper, straight-arrow May and eccentrically brilliant Bryant to show why their partnership works so perfectly. (And not just because Bryant hangs out with practicing witches.)

I would love to visit London and enlist Christopher Fowler as a guide--what a great trip THAT would be!

Since I can't do that, I'll just have to settle for virtually touring London and its environs with the off-beat team of Bryant and May. You should give that a try, too.

First sentence: There was a witch around here somewhere.

A young woman dies in St. Bride’s Church—there is no apparent cause of death. Bryant and May are called to the office of Oskar Kasavian; the man determined to shut down the Peculiar Crimes Unit. However, that’s not why they were summoned. Instead, he wants them to find out why his wife, an Albanian Muslim, has been acting strangely. A second death seems to link the two situations and sends Bryant and May on a fascinating trail.

From the very first, you know you’re in for something unusual and quite delightful. However, light soon turns to dark and a sense of dread.

Although the PUC and filled with interesting characters, this book puts a greater focus on Arthur Bryant, the eldest and most peculiar of the PUC. He is well described as being…”as much a part of London as the hobbled Tower raven, a Piccadilly barber, a gunman in the Blind Begger, and he would not be moved from his determined path. He was, everyone agreed, an annoying, impossible and indispensible fellow who had long ago decided that it was better to be disliked than forgotten.” Bryant often seeing things in situations that others do not.

Crime Scene Manager/Info Tech Dan Banbury also receives more time in this book. It is fascinating to follow him through his Sherlockian forensic evidence search.

There are interesting observations on class barriers and on poverty. Fowler perfectly captures the snarkiness of which the wives of important men are capable and building their own hierarchy based on their husband’s success.

Fowler very cleverly takes seemingly disparate threads and slowly weaves them together. Even though the plot may seem to wander a bit, there is method to the madness as it slowly circles nicely around and ends with a very satisfactory close.

“The Invisible Code” is a delightful mystery filled with humor, fascinating details and a very good surprise at the end.

THE INVISIBLE CODE (Pol Proc-Bryant and May-England-Contemp) – VG+
Fowler, Christopher – 10th in series
Bantam, 2013

This is my first introduction to the Peculiar Crimes Unit (though I am familiar with the series) and I was not disappointed. Christopher Fowler is a very clever and very witty writer that will keep the pages turning right until the end. I laughed out loud several times while reading this book.

The story centers on the Peculiar Crimes Unit in London, England. This is a branch of “the Met” as they call it but they are ostracized because of their unorthodox ways of getting things done (and they suspect jealously due to their high solve rate). The detectives in this unit are a rag tag bunch of misfits but that does not stand in the way of solving cases.

This series reminds me of Sherlock Holmes meets the Brit series New Tricks with a bit more humor mixed in. As someone else said, this is not a comedy, it is a quite serious mystery that unravels at a bit of a slow pace. However, author Fowler has well placed witticisms scattered throughout the story to keep it moving. I admit I struggled with the way the story was written (for lack of a better description, it is written in "British English" rather than "American English") but that did not detract from my enjoyment. I have eyed these Peculiar Crimes books for quite a while and I can honestly say I don't know what took so long. These are brilliant and I look forward to reading the rest.

The Peculiar Crimes Unit -- which could never exist -- solves crimes involving the occult, in a general sense. Crimes that do not exactly exist.

Bryant and May, older detectives, rationalists, museum hound Bryant and police proceduralist May, are quaint gentlemen, and London is a quaint place with strange churches and museums and plaques -- places that do exist, with stories that are steeped in Britishness. The dressing on the murders/detective story is of a sort, the patched tweedy arms and pipe set taking the reader through their erudition, a pleasant journey and read, many jumbled lines. Witch hunting? Nope. The red thread that marked insanity in Bedlam Hospital? Not really. Good and bad witches give way to multi-nationals and class based envies.

It is pretty hard to make a murder mystery interesting. Much less a series. Here the lead characters and the writing, which takes time for characters other than the central, and wanders the mystery through the City, makes for a good diverting potboiler, if not exciting or BAM. I liked the main detectives, but was appropriately frustrated by their hang dog style -- which is how the author allows the story to wander, and gets to novel length.

I don't want to sound negative. There is great charm in the narrative. Would I purchase all of the series? I would do another, and decide then!

ome for the characters, stay for the mystery. That sums up the brilliantly conceived and wonderfully executed Bryant & May series. Arthur Bryant and John May are the senior detectives of the Peculiar Crimes Unit (PCU), a branch of London’s police force that is regarded by the powers-that-be as an anachronistic but nonetheless unfortunately necessary embarrassment. Bryant and May have been detectives since World War II, which makes them very seasoned citizens. Sometimes they’re forgetful or erratic, but they remind me of that unlabeled box in the attic that is fun to shake open on occasion just to see what falls out. What often falls out during the course of any investigation is a veritable cornucopia of arcane information about metropolitan London.

Even if you care not a whit for British mysteries, or mysteries in general, you should read every installment of this series, simply for the factoids about London that author Christopher Fowler scatters like breadcrumbs throughout the narrative. They are by turns hilarious and horrific, shot through with droll humor that jumps out at you unexpectedly and then quickly exits as mayhem quietly ensues.

This latest addition begins with the death of a young woman in a London church, a death of unknown cause for a seemingly unknown reason. It is just the type of investigation for which the PCU lives and, of course, can’t get to save its life. Literally. What occurs, though, is that they are assigned an even more puzzling case from an even more surprising source.

Oskar Kasavian, the head of Home Office security, has been a thorn in the side of the PCU in its modern incarnation, and as a result, the PCU has existed more in spite of him than because of him. So Bryant and May are stunned when they are summoned to Kasavian’s office and hear him humbly beg for their assistance. His wife, Sabira, has been behaving oddly for weeks, alleging that evil and unseen forces are pursuing her with deadly intent. These spells (if that’s what they are) could not be happening at a worse time, given that Kasavian is on the verge of presenting a national security plan that will make important changes in the framework of Britain’s defense and against terrorism. Kasavian’s career and marriage hinge on the success of the CPU.

The incentive for Bryant and May is that if they are successful, the CPU will be granted full and official status as a department by the City of London. They undertake the investigation, taking jurisdiction of the church death in the bargain.

Predictably enough, the CPU’s investigation demonstrates that the two cases are related, even as the trail leads to unpredictable places --- from the alleys of the least fortunate to the clubs of the most privileged --- with several stops in between, historically and hysterically. Clues come from unexpected sources, from the quick and the dead (mostly from the latter), and the team follows several blind and false trails before ultimately uncovering an evil force that has been at work for years and that potentially will tip the balance of power politically in England and beyond.

Fans will find much to love in THE INVISIBLE CODE, not the least of which is the introduction of a character near the end of the book, who may (or may not) bear an influence upon future installments. It is hard to imagine this series getting any better than it currently is, but it appears that the best is yet to come. Jump on now if you haven’t already.

Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

A young woman is sitting outside St Bride's church, reading. However, when she is first annoyed by two children and then stung by a wasp, she moves inside a church where, moments later, she collapses and dies. The death is declared natural but Arthur Bryant of the Peculiar Crimes Unit, thinks differently. However, when he asks to take over the investigation, he is denied.

When he and his partner, John May, are called into the office of Oskar Kasavian, their powerful arch-nemesis, they assume it is another attempt to shut down the unit. Instead Kasavian wants them to look into the strange behaviour of his young and beautiful Albanian wife. She is clearly terrified of something but is afraid to say what. Her actions become increasingly more paranoid and violent and she is finally institutionalized, Bryant is the only one who thinks she isn't crazy and sets out to prove it. Soon, the unit is enmeshed in a deadly government coverup which has far-reaching implications, the deaths of a whistleblower and a journalist, not to mention the over-arching ambitions of the rich and bored political wives who lunch.

This is the tenth book in the Bryant and Mays series but it is my first. The two protagonists are not your usual police heroes. They are both past the first bloom of youth; in fact, Bryant is clearly way past the age of retirement. He is eccentric in the ways that only elderly people in British novels can be eccentric, muddle-headed on the surface but with a whole lot of smarts and insights going on underneath. May, on the other hand is much more logical and less prone to leaps of intuition. He's a great proponent of the theory of Occam's Razor ie the simplest solution is usually the right one but is willing to follow where Bryant leads even into some of the strangest places London has to offer. Despite their differences, the two work well together.

The Peculiar Crimes Unit takes on cases which are deemed more than a little strange and the pair are willing to follow leads which take them to odd places and to deal with odd characters including a `white witch' and a man who has the uncanny ability to control others just by touch, but, despite this, the book is more Agatha Christie than Dan Brown. There is no sense that the author, Christopher Fowler, expects the story to be taken seriously, rather that he is out to entertain and that he does.

This was a fun book with lots of strange twists and turns, elements of the macabre, and some eccentric but interesting characters. It was topical while retaining the feel of a British cosy despite the London setting. I also loved the glimpses into some of the less touristy but equally fascinating sites in London. The Invisible Code is the kind of book you can happily curl up to if you enjoy a nice cosy mystery and appreciate a bit of the supernatural thrown into the mix.

The Invisible Code, is the tenth standalone book in the ‘Peculiar Crimes Unit’ Series, but the first one that I got my hands on thanks to Netgalley. It is always better to read the books in a series in order to be able to see the main characters being introduced and their growth over the period, but then it is not always possible. I usually do not mind picking up standalones of a series from here and there – but in this case I so wish I had the chance to read the books in order from the beginning because the protagonists are such characters that make you want to see their journey throughout.

Arthur Bryant and John May are part of a self-sufficient Peculiar Crimes Unit that pick up, yes, peculiar cases that the other departments cannot solve and approach them in their own unique way. They are not the most popular branch around and are always under scrutiny with constant pressure of being shut down. When another peculiar case comes up, Bryant wants a chance to work on it where a woman trying to avoid annoying children, walks into a church and keels over and dies. But the case is beyond their reach and when Oskar Kasavian, the head of Home Office security and long-time adversary of the PCU needs their help with a sensitive issue, Bryant uses the opportunity to leverage his way into the other case as well. Oskar’s wife has been behaving oddly and when another body turns up, the two seemingly unrelated cases suddenly become vital to each other in order to be solved.

In the era of NCIS/CSI/Person of Interest/Almost Human, where advanced technology plays a crucial role, PCU is almost like a walk back into the black and white era. Unconventional in their ways, according to the current trend anyway, May & Bryant stand out like a sore thumb. But it is also what makes their story much more interesting to read. I absolutely adored Bryant and his quirky nature and May’s people skills more than makes up for Bryant’s lack of it. They are a team - more than a detective and sidekick. The plot is simple yet intricate and consuming. Then there’s the author’s unmatched style of narration that rounds up the story so well.

I absolutely loved this book! The mind exercises alone trying to follow Arthur Bryant was well worth reading it. I love British mysteries, and I was surprised Fowler hasn't been on my radar. It's just that these British blokes write detective stories, mysteries, suspense, and thrillers with a totally different logic flow than American writers, making some American writers' stories totally predictable (e.g., James Patterson, Lee Child to name a couple). "The Invisible Code" keeps you guessing in a way no American mystery/suspense/detective story can, until the very end. Even though Bryant explains how he arrived at his conclusion and made a correct and well-deserved arrest, the steps he took to reach his conclusion defies normal logic and was well hidden and nested in clever innuendos throughout the book by Fowler. I have yet to read an American (or any other author for that matter) write the way Fowler does. I'm totally looking forward to reading the rest of his PCU mysteries!

Two children playing "Witch Hunt" follow their selected witch to St. Bride's Church. Inside the woman collapses and dies with no apparent cause of death obvious. Arthur Bryant expects that this case will be handed over to the Peculiar Crimes Unit, but instead the city police investigate it.

Then, Oskar Kasavian, the head of Home Office Security who also happens to be their nemesis, calls them and asks them for help. His wife has been acting increasingly erratically, and he wants them to get to the bottom of it.

When a second death links the 2 women's cases, Bryant and May end up all over London looking into the case to catch the killer whether arcane or not.

This is a good mystery. It has some dark humor to it, which certainly doesn't hurt. "As a student of human nature he would have made a fine pastry chef." "The Peculiar Crimes Unit was the flea in his ear, the pea under his mattress, the ground glass in his gin, but at least he had lately abandoned his attempts to have it closed down."

As it goes along it waffles between hinting at an arcane solution to the mystery and a logical scientific type answer. As a result, when the answer does come, it's a bit of a surprise. I didn't guess the outcome in advance which was nice. This was my first Bryant and May mystery. I am wondering if all their mysteries are as twisty and delightful as this one. These 2 detectives may be as the author says in the afterword, Golden Agers, but they are sharp as tacks. It's a pleasure to see them work.

I gave this book 4 out of 5 stars. I really liked it.

Disclaimer: I was provided with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.