bookshelves: tbr-busting-2014, summer-2014, london, series, britain-england, mystery-thriller, witches-and-wizards, poison, amusing, author-love, fantasy, doo-lally, historical-fiction
Read from March 11 to August 05, 2014


Description:
Two small children are playing a game called 'Witch-Hunter'. They place a curse on a young woman taking lunch in a church courtyard and wait for her to die. An hour later the woman is indeed found dead inside St Bride's Church - a building that no-one else has entered. Unfortunately Bryant & May are refused the case. Instead, there are hired by their greatest enemy to find out why his wife has suddenly started behaving strangely. She's become an embarrassment to him at government dinners, and he is convinced that someone is trying to drive her insane. She has even taken to covering the mirrors in her apartment, and believes herself to be the victim of witchcraft. Then a society photographer is stabbed to death in a nearby park and suddenly a link emerges between the two cases. And so begins an investigation that will test the members of the Peculiar Crimes Unit to their limits, setting Arthur Bryant off on a trail that leads to Bedlam and Bletchley Park, and into the world of madness, codes and the secret of London's strangest relic. 
The Rake Taking Possession of the Estate by Hogarth
A madcap romp through some of the most interesting snippets of London's history. Add in a Twist of MPs' Wives (collective noun), a shaken-not-stirred Bethlehem variant, swirl in a whole bunch of code, and top off with three sherbet lemons, a fourth half sucked. What have you got? A rollicking good, solid Bryant and May insert.

3* - Full Dark House (2003)
4* - The Water Room (2004)
4* - Seventy-Seven Clocks (2005)
3* - Ten Second Staircase (2006)
3.5* - White Corridor (2007)
3.5* - The Victoria Vanishes (2008)
3* - Bryant and May on the Loose (2009)
4* - Off the Rails (2010)
3.5* - Bryant and May and the Memory of Blood (2011)
3.5* - The Invisible Code (2012)