Customer Reviews

White Corridor

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As a fan of Christopher Fowler's Peculiar Crime Unit as well as a fan of locked room mysteries, I viewed the arrival of this book with trepidation, because there are so few good new locked room murder mysteries. The last good new one I read was Barbara Amato's "Hard Tack" back in 1991. Even when I was two-thirds through Fowler's new book, "White Corridor", the dread of an inadequate solution remained. Fowler's style is very different from that in traditional locked room mysteries such as those by John Dickson Carr, but his style is also part of his charm. Fowler doesn't have much interest in a complex technical anlaysis of the murder scene. There simply wasn't any good discussion of whether door locks, window latches and other devices could or might have been manipulated to create the illusion of a locked room.

But the ending was worth the wait. The hallmark of a new locked room murder mystery is a novel solution to the locked room problem, and Fowler succeeds on all counts here.

Christopher Fowler's droll and original "White Corridor" brings back the London-based Peculiar Crimes Unit, "a highly unorthodox specialist police division" founded by the now elderly senior detectives Arthur Bryant and John May. Bryant, in particular, has attracted a great deal of attention (mostly negative) because of his reliance on psychics, necromancers, cryptozoologists, and alternative therapists to help him solve "impossible" crimes. The PCU tackles sensitive cases using out-of-the-box thinking; they work outside of the many constraints that shackle the regular members of the Metropolitan Police Force. Unfortunately, Bryant and May have made some powerful enemies, including Oskar Kasavian, the vindictive supervisor in charge of Internal Security. Kasavian is plotting to get rid of the PCU once and for all.

Acting Unit Chief Raymond Land decides to declare a compulsory one week furlough for the PCU, ostensibly to upgrade the unit's computer system and to better organize its operations. In addition, the PCU's irascible pathologist, Oswald Finch, is about to retire; the thought of no longer hanging around his beloved mortuary throws Finch into a panic. He enjoys working with corpses; he has even begun to resemble them. Finch's probable successor, the Eton-educated Giles Kershaw, is looking forward to stepping into his mentor's shoes, but it turns out that Kershaw's appointment may not be a sure thing.

During this time of transition, Bryant drags May off to a convention of psychics, leaving the unit under the leadership of the conscientious Detective Sergeant Janice Longbright. When Bryant and May get caught in a blizzard, they are stranded somewhere in the Dartmoor countryside. They are freezing and anxious, since the rescue services will not be able to reach them until the weather clears. Meanwhile, DS Longbright and her colleagues are called upon not only to solve a sensitive murder case, but also to man the barricades when a royal visitor is invited to Mornington Crescent. Nor do Bryant and May get a well-deserved break from crime-solving. Even during a violent snowstorm, they end up trailing a mysterious killer with shadowy motives.

"White Corridor" is a sharply written, literate, and lively mystery. Fowler is a magnificent descriptive writer and his dialogue is brisk and dryly humorous. The story lines are complex and challenging enough to provide perfect fodder for the PCU. All of the characters are beautifully depicted: Bryant is one of the most amusing and unusual protagonists in contemporary British mysteries. He dresses in ridiculously out-of-date clothes, is on a first-name basis with a white witch, cultivates a sickly marijuana plant, plays sadistic practical jokes on his peers, disdains modern technology, and bickers endlessly with his frustrated but devoted housekeeper, Alma Sorrowbridge. However, he is also a brilliant detective, and in some ways, his mind works every bit as effectively as the most high-tech computer. May complements Bryant perfectly; although John is the more practical and more technologically proficient of the two, he has great respect for Arthur's intelligence and experience. Working together, the two men accomplish much more than they could separately.

The book succeeds for another reason. Instead of focusing exclusively on Bryant and May, the more junior members of the PCU finally take center stage. It is entertaining to observe them putting together clues on their own and proudly showing that they have profited from the careful training that they received at the feet of the masters. "White Corridor" ends on a bizarre note, but if the crimes featured in Fowler's books weren't outlandish, there would be no need for these highly imaginative and creative detectives.

If Ken Bruen's east London crime novels featuring the brutal and boorish Inspector Brant are literature as rugby, then Christopher Fowler's mysteries of the aging Brant and May detective duo are symphonies. Both entertaining, but Bruen is jarring and violent where Fowler is refined, cultured, and subtle. Fowler writes the classic British mystery: dryly humorous, understated, unadorned, and intelligent. In this outing, inspectors Arthur Brant and John May, the irascible and unorthodox heads of London's Peculiar Crimes Division, find themselves stranded in a freak blizzard on the moors of southern England, leaving Sergeant Janice Longbright in charge to solve the ultimate "murder in the inside-locked room" mystery of the team's chief forensic scientist. Meanwhile, a serial killer is on the loose in the snowdrifts, keeping our discerning duo occupied between cell phone-assist calls to Longbright and her short-handed crew. But despite facing simultaneous murder investigations and answering some nagging questions about the apparent drug overdose death of a young woman whose body occupies the morgue, the real terror facing the PCU team is the looming stationhouse tour of an insufferable princess and PCU nemesis Oskar Kasavian, the London PD bureaucrat bent on shutting the renegade crime-solving unit down.

Rich in allegory and clever forensics, contemporary crime fiction's most eccentric inspectors plough through deliciously convoluted threads of seemingly unrelated mysteries, taking a few keenly twisted turns before arriving at a clever and, at least for me, a totally unexpected climax. Brilliant character development and sharp, witty, dialogue add up for one of the year's most engaging and enjoyable crime novels. If you haven't met Brant and May yet, this is as good a place as any to start - and chances are you'll not remain a stranger.

I am probably too old to be using the term "sense of wonder," but I will when discussing Christopher Fowler's Bryant & May mysteries. Arthur Bryant and John May are well past retirement age, yet somehow they continue working as senior detectives for London's Peculiar Crimes Unit. The eccentric Bryant and enigmatic May are perfectly and at once matched and mismatched, and the crimes that their creator invents for them and their similarly strange co-workers to solve are such clever variations on a theme that one is usually enthralled within just a few pages of the beginning of the book.

WHITE CORRIDOR, the fifth installment in the Bryant & May series, differs somewhat from its predecessors in that the mysteries confronting the two protagonists are not linked to one of their cases from the past but rather are firmly grounded in the present. The circumstances surrounding the offices of the Peculiar Crimes Unit are chaotic, to say the least, what with the imminent retirement of Unit Pathologist Oswald Finch, an unexpected tour from visiting royalty (which is crafted to shut down the PCU forever) and the closing of headquarters for one week while its wiring is brought up to 21st-century standards. Bryant schedules a weekend frolic of his own --- all too typically a convention of psychics --- dragging an extremely reluctant May along with him.

Naturally, everything that can go wrong does. A member of the PCU is found murdered in a locked room on-site, and at least one fellow member had motive and opportunity to commit the crime. Meanwhile, Bryant and May find themselves stuck in their van in the middle of a snowstorm in the Dartmouth countryside, even as a shadowy murderer prowls the landscape around them, wreaking terror on other trapped motorists. Bryant and May accordingly are challenged with double duty, attempting to solve one crime while tackling the other via cell phone, even as the PCU faces their gravest threat yet to being disbanded.

Both plot- and character-driven, WHITE CORRIDOR demonstrates that Fowler has no intention of letting this imaginatively conceived and craftily written series succumb to formulaic familiarity. One never knows from page to page what Bryant will do or say. And May? Even as he plays foible to Bryant, it appears from hints dropped in the book that May has enough secrets to keep the series going for years. If you haven't jumped on the Bryant & May train yet, now is the time to familiarize yourself with a series that is on its way to becoming an institution.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

First Sentence: NOTICE: THE PECULIAR CRIMES UNIT WILL BE SHUT FOR ONE WEEK COMMENCING MONDAY 19th FEBRUARY

While the Met's Peculiar Crimes Unit is closed down for repairs, Detectives Arthur Bryant and John May had off for an international convention of psychics. Caught in a blizzard and stuck in their van, they are tasked with solving two crimes. Back at the office, the retiring pathologist is found dead within his locked autopsy room. A woman, who escaped her abusive husband with her young son, now finds herself on the run from a man who admitted killing his mother.

One of the things I love about this series is the creativeness of the plots, and there are so many elements I enjoyed in this book. First, I love the characters; the quirkiness of Bryant and the protectiveness of May. The sense of place was excellent; you felt them stuck in that blizzard and dreaded every time they had to get out of their van and into the cold. I appreciated their helping their colleagues solve the case back at headquarters and the approach that they wouldn't always be there to solve the cases. Fowler took what could have been a cliché story line of the woman running from a stalker and gave us something new with it. I am a definite fan and end each book eagerly awaiting the next.

Happy to report that (from my perspective) the previous enthusiastic Amazon reviews of "White Corridor," which led me to buy the book, were right on the money. So thanks to those eight and let me add my own applause for this book which is throughly inventive, original and engaging from the first page. Author Fowler has a real knack for the slow revealing of clues that ultimately solve/resolve the several mysteries at work in this book. Also of real interest to me were the wonderful character sketches provided in the book. There are a lot of players here and even the secondary participants are well described and presented for the reader.
This was altogether a great find and encourages me to try other books in the series.

WHITE CORRIDOR represents an advance on the formula of previous Bryant and May books and doesn't depend so directly on their Alistair Sim like charms and the mere fact of their being so old and stubborn. Instead author Christopher Fowler bifurcates the space of the novel into four "white corridors," each with its own puzzle. Two of these dominate most of the detective work. In one, we follow the story of Madeline Gilby, a grocery checkout girl and single mother of a restless young son Ryan. Madeline flees an abusive husband and tries to find life again in the south of France, along the Riviera, in the off season. In the warmth of the sun, Madeline comes back to life and responds to the amorous advances of Johann, sort of a Karl-Boehm-in-Peeping-Tom kind of stud who murdered his mother way back when after enduring a childhood of torment and abuse. Uh-oh, not the perfect guy for Madeline, who has incidentally tried developing her psychic powers to weaken men under the guidance of London's notorious chiseler Kate Summerton.

In the second storyline Bryant and May decide to leave the Unit for a holiday in which they plan to attend a psychics convention in the wilds of England, but the worst snowstorm ever to hit a detective story strands them on a lonely stretch of highway in conditions too perilous to proceed further in. The delicious warmth and sun of the Riviera in the first section here gives way to bonechilling cold and a creeping terror as a madman is apparently stalking the snowbound cars one by one and committing terrible murders whenever his fancy calls him. Will Bryant and May be next?

In the third plot, back home at the PCU, crotchety forensic nut Oswald Finch is found horridly murdered inside his own morgue, and all the doors locked from within. Without their two chiefs, the pressure drops on the younger members of the unit, charged with clearing up the case before the visit of a minor royal princess and a judgmental entourage out to dismantle the archaic PCU. This threat to the PCU doesn't have as much built in suspense as Fowler must think it does, for really, who cares, but in all other respects WHITE CORRIDOR is an immense improvement over last year's TEN SECOND STAIRCASE, with interesting characters, a rollicking Steve Coogan like humor, the most picturesque writing this side of William Trevor, and a genuinely new locked room problem.

I wound up giving Christopher Fowler a lathering last year when STAIRCASE, his "Highwayman" novel, failed to meet my impossibly high standards. Mr. Fowler wrote me a forgiving note that touched me, and now I regret having written from my high horse. I asked him if he were a Buddhist, since in my limited experience who else would have gotten up so amiably after having his arse kicked to the curb, but Fowler replied that he wasn't a Buddhist, only an Englishman LOL.

This is the fifth adventure of Arthur Bryant and John May, two "aging" detectives who run the fictional "Peculiar Crimes Unit - PCU" in London, England. Bryant is the curmudgeon, unconventional, eschewing technology and "progress"; May is the dapper and somewhat brooding elderly gentleman, who still has an eye for the ladies and them for him. These books disprove the adage that getting older means getting boring. And except for some slightly over-spectacular conclusions this is a very good series.

That being said White Corridor is somewhat of a departure. Bryant and May are central in the book but somewhat on the periphery of the main case as they find themselves trapped on a highway during a blizzard in the British countryside. Back at the PCU one of their own - a cranky pathologist - is found dead on the job. The rest of the team, whom we get to know in much more detail in this book, must step into the breech and solve the crime. Meanwhile their two elderly snowbound superiors who wait to be rescued - communicating back to HQ via cell-phone - find themselves embroiled in their own mystery. It appears that an international serial killer may be amongst them in the snowdrifts.

The first mystery back in London works very well, even with the somewhat difficult to believe circumstances. The second one back in the blizzard, concerning the serial killer and a young single mother on the run, just never clicked for me from start to finish. And since that "case" makes up a good part of the book proved disappointing.

So if I've piqued your interest, by all means check out this series - it's a good one. Just don't start here - it's the weakest addition.

As with all the Bryant and May mysteries, I have to say that I mostly enjoyed it. In fact, I think I enjoyed White Corridor more than some of the previous volumes in the series. For one thing, the solutions to both cases seemed to be more logical, less beyond the realm of believability.

But something disturbed me...

*** SPOILER WARNING!! Stop reading if you haven't finished the book!! ***

What happens to Ryan?! I was dreadfully concerned about that poor little boy, and at the end, it seemed he was abandoned by both the characters and the author. I'm assuming they didn't leave him out in the cold, alone, but you'd never know it from the rest of the book.

Although this story isn't as "weird" as others in the series, it's still enjoyable as Bryant and May try to solve two crimes via cell phone while stranded in their car in a blizzard. One crime concerns the death of the coroner inside a locked room which only contains other corpses; the other involves a mother and child being pursued by a man who may or may not be a serial killer. Since the two detectives are relatively immobile in this one, the other members of the Peculiar Crimes Unit get to flex their muscles a little. Very enjoyable entry in the series