This is the fourth outing in the Bryant and May series. It sees our octogenarian detectives faced with a number of ‘impossible’ murders. There appears to be nothing to link all the victims apart from their being celebrities of questionable ethics who have fallen from grace in recent times. As May says to Bryant at the first murder scene: ‘I’m sure you must be very excited. On a purely investigative level this one’s right up your street. Impossible death, single point of entry, no motive, no suspects, and a single witness who reckons the culprit was a man on a horse.’

Apart from the ongoing investigations, the Peculiar Crimes Unit again find themselves under threat of being closed down by the powers that be. As you follow the arcane methods used, particularly by Arthur Bryant, it’s not surprising! There is also the added complication of John May’s grand-daughter joining their team as part of a new law enforcement training initiative. John feels particularly protective of April as he feels responsible for her mother’s death.

The joy of reading this series is to be found in the humour and the tidbits of knowledge that you didn’t know you wanted to know, until you read it! For example, this wonderful exchange between Bryant and May:

Bryant: I won’t remember the names of pop stars. I’d prefer to keep my memory filled with useful data.
May: But how useful is the data you store? You know precisely how many Thames crossings there are between Teddington Weir and the Tower of London…
Bryant: Of course, twenty-eight, everyone knows that…
May: and you told me why there are metal pinecones on top of half of the railings in London…
B: the Georgians adopted the pinecone as an architectural motif because it was the Roman symbol of hospitality, that’s common knowledge…
M. But it’s not, don’t you see? Most people we deal with don’t give a monkey’s fart about such architectural idiosyncrasies. Why should they? Such things have no relevance to their lives
B. Rubbish. The details of everyday living enrich us all.
M. But they’re not useful. The majority is more interested in finding aspirational rose models amongst celebrities…
B. Your utilitarian attitude is very taxing.

This third instalment in the Peculiar Crimes Unit series is way too long at 496 pages. It is also way too unbelievable and convoluted. A good edit would have made this a 4 star book. However, if you’ve read the previous two books, you’ll enjoy the development of the relationship between the main characters Bryant and May, and the wonderful cast of support citizen detectives they seem to attract to their Unit.
I enjoyed the many references to 1970s culture. An exchange between May and Bryant, where Bryant refers to a band called Concrete Blimp, and May replies ‘I assume you mean Led Zeppelin’ had me laugh out loud.
Bryant often sprouts words of wisdom, which in a real person would drive you nuts, but on the page sound sage and wise. My favourite: ‘We spend our youth attempting to change the future, and the rest of our lives trying to preserve the past.’ True? True!

Having thoroughly enjoyed Fowler’s first Bryant & May mystery, Full Dark House, I approached The Water Room with combined excitement and trepidation. Would their second adventure live up to their first? I won’t keep you in suspense….the answer is an unequivocal ‘yes’.

Unlike Full Dark House which involved two time frames, The Water Room is set in contemporary London. However, there is a deep sense of London’s history impacting on the lives of its present day citizens, in this instance, the underground rivers of London, ‘which created the form of London itself. They are the arteries from which its flesh grew.’

Arthur Bryant and John May lead the Met’s Peculiar Crimes Unit, established during the Second World War to investigate the crimes the Met find too left-field. When the elderly sister of Bryant’s friend is found dead in her basement, and her death is revealed to have been anything but natural, the PCU launch an investigation that could be their unit’s last if they cannot solve it.

This series proves that crime novels can have just as much literary merit as any other genre. For example, Fowler creates a potent sense of place when describing an area in London that time seems to have overlooked:
‘You forgot that there were still postwar pockets like this. Dark little houses. Cool still rooms. Ticking clocks. Settling dust. Polished wood. Time stretched back to the boredom of childhood.’

This series also has a great sense of fun. There were several passages that made me laugh out loud; clever funny, not lowest-common-denominator funny:
‘“Mr Bryant usually brings me his palaeographic conundrums for reinterpretation, although, alas, I fear his recent reluctance to employ my services suggests that the age of the erudite criminal has passed along with the locked-room mystery, clean public toilets and a quality postal service.”’

The mystery was suitably peculiar and the resolution satisfying. Bryant and May are fine company to keep, and I look forward to reading their further adventures.

Arthur Bryant and John May first meet as (very) young detectives in 1940 in London. They have been selected for the Met’s new unit: The Peculiar Crimes Unit, which is defined by the Home Secretary as “London’s last resort for sensitive cases” but as Bryant explains to May on their first meeting “it’s becoming a home for dubious and abnormal crimes”. London is in the midst of constant bombardment by the Germans, “If London was the centre of the world, the world was burning. It was a violent place in which to discover a purpose. It was a good place to forge a friendship.”

In modern day London, an explosion obliterates the North London Peculiar Crimes Unit, with an elderly Arthur Bryant in it. May and his fellow ageing colleagues conclude that the destruction of the unit and murder of Bryant relate to the first case that Bryant and May investigated in 1940, involving the discovery of a dancer’s body, with her feet removed.

The story alternate between this original investigation and the current. These time shifts are made easy for the reader to discern by cleverly making reference in the first paragraph either to something modern, for example a MacDonald’s cafe, or something relating to the war.

If you are at all interested in the theatre and the workings of stage productions, you will find the mystery surrounding the murders during the production fascinating. Fowler is particularly effective in creating an atmosphere of menace, and the theatre setting adds a gothic note to the mystery. The love of theatre and the people who work behind the scenes of a production is apparent: “They were the real theatre angels, happy to remain in the shadows beyond the footlights, only tangentially attached to the stage, essential to its survival.” London during the Blitz is a character in of itself, creating a sense of foreboding and an underlying constant tension.

This is the first book in the Bryant and May series and sets the scene for future mysteries. What makes this book so appealing is the obvious affection that develops between these two very different men. “For the next five decades, the two detectives made it their habit to walk along the south bank of the Thames around sunset…They argued about criminal psychology, endlessly revising their conclusions, but sometimes, when the sky was lower and the colours were drained from the Embankment buildings, they talked of women they had loved and lost, and plans made and abandoned, of outlandish ideas and unrealised dreams; often they just walked in comfortable silence…”

I am looking forward to spending more time in the company of Arthur Bryant and John May.