Ten Second Staircase: A Peculiar Crimes Unit Mystery [Paperback]

Christopher Fowler's "Ten Second Staircase" is a seriocomic locked room mystery about a series of murders that may prove to be the undoing of the North London Peculiar Crimes Unit. The PCU tackles high profile cases that are politically sensitive and liable to cause public distress or panic. Two elderly gentlemen, Arthur Bryant and John May, have been in the unit for years and their supervisor, Raymond Land, sends a memo to the Senior Home Liaison Officer complaining about these two "geriatric detectives." Bryant and May have been a constant thorn in Land's side because of their unorthodox and sometimes bizarre behavior and methodology.

The latest case to bedevil the PCU is the death of Saralla White, a female artist who was drowned in her own water-filled artwork. An eyewitness makes the unbelievable claim that he saw a highwayman in a tricorn hat, cape, and thigh boots atop a stallion at the crime scene. Bryant and May follow a host of leads and come up empty. Soon, the very same highwayman is sighted at the scene of other murders, and he seems to be taunting the investigators. The pressure is on; if the PCU fails to capture the killer, it is likely that the unit will be shut down.

Christopher Fowler's writing is reminiscent of Jasper Fforde's in that both authors combine outlandish and serious elements in their stories. Like Fforde, Fowler is highly literate and his descriptive writing and dialogue are immensely entertaining. In addition, Fowler intelligently explores such themes as how criminals have changed over the years, and how new police methods, such as DNA testing and computer technology, can never completely replace the experience and brainpower of a highly intelligent and intuitive sleuth. The author also touches on the politics of policing and the shallowness of our celebrity obsessed culture.

Fowler's characters are all beautifully depicted. Bryant, who is three years older than May, is a Luddite who destroys mobile phones with alarming speed. He drives a broken down rust bucket, dresses in outlandish clothing, and is cheerfully insubordinate to his superiors. He consults "disgraced experts, discredited psychics, and registered felons," in his efforts to solve his cases. May is a bit more conventional and technologically savvy than Bryant, but he is also fiercely protective of his old-fashioned partner. Much to his boss's displeasure, May brings in his granddaughter, April, an agoraphobic with a troubled past, to join the unit.

The mystery is completely implausible, but it also compelling and difficult to solve. My main reservation is that the narrative rambles on for over three hundred and fifty pages, when it could easily have been trimmed with no loss of coherence. "Ten Second Staircase" is filled with so many characters, themes, and plot lines, that it eventually feels cluttered. However, there is enough of value to garner it a recommendation for those patient readers who enjoy strange mysteries and even stranger investigators.

June 25, 2006

Crime

Offbeat Cops

By MARILYN STASIO

SOME crimes are just too bizarre to be processed through the normal channels of London's Metropolitan Police force. In the offbeat novels of Christopher Fowler, a special place is reserved for such oddities -- the Peculiar Crimes Unit, which was established during World War II to deal with cases that might cause "social panics and general public malaise." To the chagrin of the present-day police administration (and the delight of readers looking for something genuinely witty and original), this anachronistic department lingers on under the unorthodox command of Arthur Bryant and John May, misanthropic detectives long past the age of retirement and "altogether too vague, intellectual, socialist and downright arty" for the comfort of the establishment.

TEN SECOND STAIRCASE (Bantam, $24) is the fourth book in the series and a lively example of Fowler's imaginative approach to what is essentially a traditional whodunit. Here's how things typically work: the detectives are challenged to solve a crime so fantastic it beggars belief. May, the methodical fact-finder, will collate the data and try to apply some pattern of logic to the incredible events. Bryant, the crotchety genius who works by instinct, will look to London's dark and bloody past for enlightenment, believing that "criminals and victims were linked to the land, to history and to their own irrepressible natures." As historians, librarians, clairvoyants, exorcists and white witches are consulted, the plot bulges with strange facts and theories. They may or may not be germane to the case, but they're madly entertaining.

Fowler is in exuberant form here. His story begins with a series of elaborate executions of second-rate celebrities, carried out, according to eyewitnesses, by a masked highwayman on horseback. Seizing on the mythic stature of this figure, with its links to Robin Hood and other folk legends, Bryant speculates that the vigilante is a flesh-and-blood murderer "rehabilitated in the public mind as a hero, a people's champion." The question is, which disenfranchised group has conjured him up -- and what's the beef with celebrities?

The sleuths direct their attention to a public housing project in Clerkenwell, the historic stamping ground of the Knights Templars, where a turf war is under way between a gang of teenagers and a group of students from a nearby private school. For all their wisdom, Bryant and May are nearly undone by the motiveless malignity of these youths. The two detectives are, as a colleague puts it, compelled to update their mental software. While not exactly killing, the suspense is thrilling.

Arthur Bryant and John May are two of detective fiction's most unique anachronisms. The de facto heads of the London Police Department's Peculiar Crimes Unit (PCU), Bryant and May have been investigating murders in their somewhat peculiar way for almost 60 years. Now well ensconced within senior status, the two, as well as the somewhat unusual personalities who assist them in the ramshackle PCU offices, attempt to maintain their relevance in the modern world, occasionally eschewing modern detection methods in favor of tried-and-true tactics that have held them in good stead for decades, even as the misdeeds of the past --- more often than not --- provide clues for present-day mayhem.

TEN SECOND STAIRCASE, the latest Bryant and May novel, involves a series of locked room mysteries, in which a noted personality of some dubious repute (a controversial artist, a minor celebrity, a notorious pederast) is found dead under ambiguous circumstances, possibly by ill fortune or accident, but probably by murder most foul. An unlikely figure, appearing to be an old English highwayman, is seen in the vicinity of each death; he leaves a somewhat cryptic calling card at each scene.

As if this was not enough, the PCU finds itself threatened, as in the past, with extinction. The unexpected and unofficial test for the ongoing survival of PCU is the resolution of its most notorious cold case, one that involves the so-called Leicester Square Vampire, a cold-blooded murderer whose victims include May's own daughter. Those who occasionally have taken Fowler to task in the past for what they have considered to be unlikely solutions to difficult puzzles will have reason to rejoice here, as the apparently impossible Highwayman murders are plausibly explained.

Bryant is a curmudgeon, but one cannot help but embrace him for his penchant for rude and unpredictable --- yet dead-on --- practical jokes. May, while being the more approachable and pragmatic of the pair, has an unrepentantly sweet side to himself, manifested by his gentle doting upon April, his agoraphobic granddaughter who in TEN SECOND STAIRCASE joins the PCU as a full-time member and brings her canny powers of observation to the fore.

There is so much to like here. Fowler gently rapid-fires from the mouths of Bryant or May bits of London history at the reader, and the tone, from first word to last, is so unrestrainedly British that while reading it one can almost feel the cobblestone beneath one's feet. At the same time, there is a great deal of understated dark humor to recommend. Think, if you will, of Agatha Christie resurrected to script "The Avengers" television series, and you'll have an idea of what's going on here. Rather than being formulistic writing, this is a comfortable familiarity, given that Fowler keeps his idiosyncratic characters fresh and interesting by...well, creating fresh and interesting characters to begin with.

This element, combined with Fowler's off-kilter storyline and intriguing criminals, makes TEN SECOND STAIRCASE the strongest entry in the series to date.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

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