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  • Published: 27 June 2023
  • ISBN: 9781804990933
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 400
  • RRP: $24.99
Categories:

Bryant & May’s Peculiar London




The nation's longest-serving detectives, Arthur Bryant and John May, guide readers around the extraordinary city that's been at the heart of their 20 book career. Here are London (and some of its citizens) in all their eccentric, elusive, fascinating and often peculiar glory as they've never been seen before . . .

As the nation's oldest serving detectives, we know more about London than almost anyone. After all, we've been walking its streets and impulsively arresting its citizens for decades. Who better to take you through its less savoury side?
We'll be chatting about odd buildings, odder characters, lost venues, forgotten disasters, confusing routes, dubious gossip, illicit pleasures and hidden pubs. We'll be making all sorts of odd connections and showing you why it's almost impossible to separate fact from fiction in London.
With the help of some of our more disreputable friends, each an argumentative and unreliable expert in his or her own dodgy field, we'll explain why some streets have genders, why only two Londoners got to meet Dracula, how a department store and a prison played tricks on your mind, when a theatre got stranded in the past, how a building vanished in plain sight, what excited Charlotte Brontë about the city and where the devils hide in London.
We hope to capture something of the city's restless spirit by wilfully wandering off course, and it goes without saying that we'll bluff and bamboozle you along the way but that's all part of the fun. History is what you remember. London is what you forget (and we've forgotten a lot). So please do join us on this magical mystery tour of our city. Who knows where we'll end up?

  • Published: 27 June 2023
  • ISBN: 9781804990933
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 400
  • RRP: $24.99
Categories:

About the author

Christopher Fowler

Christopher Fowler is the author of more than forty novels (sixteen of which feature the detectives Bryant and May and the Peculiar Crimes Unit) and many short story collections. A multiple award-winner, including the coveted CWA ‘Dagger in the Library’, Chris has also written screenplays, video games, graphic novels, audio plays and two acclaimed memoirs, Paperboy and Film Freak. His most recent non-fiction book is The Book of Forgotten Authors. Chris divides his time between London's King’s Cross and Barcelona. You can find out more by visiting his website and following him on Twitter.

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Praise for Bryant & May’s Peculiar London

One of the glories of the modern crime fiction field? The deliriously eccentric books by Christopher Fowler.

Barry Forshaw, FINANCIAL TIMES

If you have never entered the curious world of Bryant and May, you're in for a treat.

THE TIMES

Devilishly clever . . . mordantly funny . . . sometimes heartbreakingly moving.

VAL McDERMID

One of the glories of the modern crime fiction field? The deliriously eccentric books by Christopher Fowler.

Barry Forshaw, FINANCIAL TIMES