RogerBW's Blog

2010 police procedural mystery/horror, eighth in the Bryant and May series. The murderer-for-hire Mr Fox has escaped from custody and vanished from his previous life. But when a woman is killed by being pushed down the staircase at King's Cross, is this more of his work?

First, blah blah, short deadline to solve the case, unit under threat of being shut down, you do this every book Mr Fowler and it's dull. (Yes, I am allowed to address a dead author. My blog, my rules.)

But really it's the business as usual: Bryant and the others do the police work, while May chases improbable coincidences and delves into obscure lore (in this case supposed hauntings on the Underground), and nothing makes any sense until you reach the final chapters. (Well, it's clear who must have dunnit, but not at all why.)

Well, that's fine. And some of the suspects are interesting, if a bit obvious. What irked me was the sudden dragging in of a real incident, the King's Cross fire of 1987, and the attribution of it to deliberate action by one of the characters here. That feels… insensitive? Or just downright rude? I think I feel that the author of fiction has a responsibility to treat their tools with respect. Perhaps I wouldn't have minded if it had been a better book, but the eventual explanations did not convince, either in terms of the killer's psychology or in sheer practicality.

I may read more of these. I may not. I'm certainly not in any hurry.