London Bridge Is Falling Down (Bryant & May / Peculiar Crimes Unit) by Christopher Fowler

London Bridge Is Falling Down (Bryant & May / Peculiar Crimes Unit) by Christopher Fowler
Review by Ernest Lilley
Bantam Hardcover / eBook  ISBN/ITEM#: 9780593356210
Date: December 7, 2021

Links: Author’s Website / Amazon Link / Show Official Info /

 

If you’re not familiar with the PCU (Peculiar Crimes Unit) of the London police force, this is either the best or worst place to start. As the cover copy says, “Bryant and May’s twentieth-anniversary case brings an ending and a new beginning to London’s most peculiar crimes unit and all who work there.”

 

Now, you may think that starting at the end, as I did, is crazy, but in this case, it’s perfect. Though this is far from the first time that the PCU has been threatened with being closed down, this time it’s for real, and even Arthur Bryant, the unit’s legendary senior detective, can’t stop it. He can, however, stall it for a little while so that he can come up with an exit strategy that leaves the team with options.

That stalling takes the form of calling up the PCU’s favorite coroner and asking what he’s got handy on the slab, which leads to an investigation of a little old lady who appears to have died of natural causes in her immaculate flat. Undeterred by appearances, Arthur and the team forge ahead, only to discover not only was this murder but that it’s just the first of more, all somehow tied to something from the past. Something code-named London Bridge, a secret kept by three women who would rather die than let it be revealed.

The past figures heavily in this twisty investigation both because that’s the way Arthur works, by tasking his widespread network of informants, all brilliant corkscrew minds in their own right, as he digs for a connection between the increasing body count. Before it’s done he’ll have to face down the CIA and the Home Office as well as rogue elements left over from Cold War espionage, and will ultimately find that the investigation comes full circle to the PCU itself.

London Bridge is Falling Down is both a tour-de-force and a tour of past cases which manages to close a chapter in this long-running series and pave the way forward for London’s most peculiar crew of crime stoppers.

Highly Recommended.

The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

The Kaiju Preservation Society
by John Scalzi

272 pages, Hardcover
Publication: March 15, 2022 by Tor Books
ISBN: 9780765389121 (ISBN10: 0765389126)
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/57693406 

The Kaiju Preservation Society is John Scalzi’s first standalone adventure since the conclusion of his New York Times bestselling Interdependency trilogy.

When COVID-19 sweeps through New York City, Jamie Gray is stuck as a dead-end driver for food delivery apps. That is, until Jamie makes a delivery to an old acquaintance, Tom, who works at what he calls “an animal rights organization.” Tom’s team needs a last-minute grunt to handle things on their next field visit. Jamie, eager to do anything, immediately signs on.

What Tom doesn’t tell Jamie is that the animals his team cares for are not here on Earth. Not our Earth, at least. In an alternate dimension, massive dinosaur-like creatures named Kaiju roam a warm and human-free world. They’re the universe’s largest and most dangerous panda and they’re in trouble.

It’s not just the Kaiju Preservation Society that’s found its way to the alternate world. Others have, too–and their carelessness could cause millions back on our Earth to die.

The Kaiju Preservation Society is the most fun I’ve had with a Scalzi novel since Redshirts, and for many of the same reasons. Scalzi loves nothing more than taking a trope, plot, or other sacred sf bovine and turning it on its head, revealing a few dark truths and poking a bit of fun at it in the process. This time he takes on Godzilla and his kin, pointing out the absurdity of the whole thing, and then sciencing the hell out of it just the same. It’s Jurrasic Park meets Pacific Rim on the other side of the looking glass, and it’s great fun. Continue reading →

Diablo Mesa by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

Diablo Mesa
by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

Hardcover, 400 pages
Published: February 15th, 2022
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Preston & Child’s latest adventure for feisty archeologist Nora Kelly and the rookie FBI Agent Corrie Swanson has them finding trouble again. This time, Nora calls Corrie when she uncovers a pair of bodies buried at the site of the 1947 Roswell incident (which she’s been talked into treating as a legitimate archeological dig).

Wait. Maybe I should have led with that. Continue reading →

Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart (Goodreads)

The Paradox Hotel
by Rob Hart

Hardcover, 336 pages
Expected publication: February 22nd 2022
by Ballantine Books

There’s a dead body in room 526 but only January Cole, former time cop and now head of hotel security, can see it. Actually, there’s a lot January can see that others don’t, because she took a few too many trips into the past and, well…this is your brain. this is your brain on too many time trips. She was booted from active TEA missions because she’d reached stage 1 of the brain erosion that’s a side effect of time travel and sent to the hotel where the very wealthy stay before taking their vacations in the past. Time Travel may be a government-controlled operation, but it’s only for the rich. The hotel is located a safe distance from the Einstein timeport, which really should have been named for the black woman who invented time travel, but no, let’s name it after an old dead white guy. Continue reading →

Rivers of London (Midnight Riot)

Midnight Riot (Rivers of London #)1by Ben Aaronovitch

Format 392 pages, Hardcover
Published January 10, 2011 by Gollancz
ISBN 9780575097568 (ISBN10: 0575097566)

Peter Grant’s a constable on the cusp of being assigned to what comes after the obligatory two-year apprenticeship on the streets of London. His superiors don’t think he’s a “proper copper,” a heads-down thief catcher and keeper of the peace, and they’re right. All his life he’s been too easily distracted to keep on one track, he’d failed out of his science courses to the dismay of his professors, and now he’s about to be consigned to a desk to do the paperwork for cops too busy (or illiterate) to fill out their own forms.

But things go sideways, as they often do for Peter, when he and Leslie May, his best friend and fellow copper, are assigned to block off a particularly gruesome murder scene in Covent Garden. While Leslie heads off to grab coffees for them, Peter notices a man in a “shabby old fashioned suit, complete with waistcoat, watchfob, and battered top hat” standing in the graveyard of the church where the murder took place. Then things get interesting. Continue reading →