Bryant & May: The Lonely Hour: A Peculiar Crimes Unit Mystery

In Fowler’s exceptional 17th novel featuring Arthur Bryant and John May of London’s Peculiar Crimes Unit (after 2018’s Bryant & May: Hall of Mirrors), the PCU investigates a murder committed with a trocar, a surgical instrument normally used to drain body fluids. A man wearing a pig mask, Hugo Blake, used it on Dhruv Cheema, who worked in his family’s fashion business. After hanging Cheema upside down in Hampstead Heath, within a circle of objects associated with satanic rituals, Blake stabbed him in the neck. The next night, Blake stabs another man in the neck before throwing his body over a bridge into the Thames. Fowler maintains suspense by alternating between Blake’s bloody campaign and the PCU’s desperate efforts to stop it by trying to find a connection between the victims. Meanwhile, Bryant and May’s decades-old partnership is tested as never before as the two argue fiercely over how to proceed. This whydunit is the epitome of an intelligent page-turner. [em]Agent: Howard Morhaim, Howard Morhaim Literary. (Dec.) [/em]