Bettie's Books

Author..................... Christopher FowlerNarrator.................. Tim GoodmanAbr/Unabr.............. UnabridgedGenre................... Fiction - MysterySource................... CDSeries Name..............Bryant and MayTotal Runtime......... 13 Hours 25 Minsblurbies - The story opens with a member of one of London's most unusual police units being blown up in his office. He is John May, partner to Arthur Bryant, who now starts to investigate his death. The search takes Bryant back to the time of their first meeting in 1940. London is struggling to survive the Blitz when a beautiful dancer is found without her feet. Bryant and May's investigation uncovers a weird gothic mystery, involving a killer who appears to be faceless. In the present day, May speculates whether that old adversary might be the killer. He needs to solve a riddle that began more than 50 years earlier. It is a tense, clever novel which keeps one riveted from the first page.There was a four candles moment in this phantom of the opera-esque mystery.My main peeve, and it is not just in connection with this particular novel, is why does a bog-standard murder-mystery have to run to nigh-on 500 pages. Too big for its own boots.