White Corridor

White Corridor (2007) Christopher Fowler

Once again the Peculiar Crimes Unit is in danger of being closed. After Raymond Land decided to close the until for a week’s vacation, a member of the unit is found killed, while Bryant and May are on their way to one of Bryant’s spiritualist conventions.

With Bryant and May out of town, the rest of the PCU has to solve the locked room mystery–while another mystery unravels in the middle of a blizzard.

This isn’t my favorite book of this series. It’s good, and it’s funny and made me laugh aloud at several points.

‘Mr Bryant is so old that most of his lifetim subscriptions have run out.’ Leslie Faraday, the increasingly portly liasion officer at the Home Office, poked about on his biscut tray looking for a Custard Cream. ‘He’s only alive because it’s illegal to kill him.’

But for some reason I can’t put my finger on, it just wasn’t quite as good as the previous books. Though it was still well worth reading.

The interesting thing about this mystery is that a big honking clue was actually bothering me, but I simply assumed I’d misread but kept reading anyway, because I was too lazy to go back and check to see if I’d read correctly. That’s not quite the same as solving the mystery, but closer than I usually get–precisely because I tend to read too fast and miss details.

If you like British mysteries, then you should check out Christopher Fowler’s Bryant and May series. You should be able to start at the White Corridor with no difficulty, but as usually I recommend picking up the first book and moving forward–heaven forbid you miss out on any of Bryant’s past irascibility.
Rating: 7/10

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