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Friday, February 25, 2011
The A to Z Mystery Author Challenge is hosted by Michelle over at Red-Headed Book-Child. You should check it out!
Christopher Fowler
The Victoria Vanishes (2008)
I have been drawn to this book ever since I saw it shiny and new on the bookseller's "New Releases" table. Alas I hadn't had the money to invest in an author I didn't know and who hadn't been personally recommended to me by someone I trust. Joining the A-Z Mystery author challenge and privately pledging not to purchase any books to complete the challenge gave me the impetus to check this mystery out at the local library. And I'm glad I did.
I do wish I'd realized that this was the sixth installment of the Peculiar Crimes Unit series; I might have begun at the beginning. On the other hand, I'm not sure any of the other books would have captured my imagination in the same way.
The blurb from Publisher's Weekly describes the book in this way:
Officialdom casts a skeptical eye on the unorthodox crime solving of London's Peculiar Crimes Unit in Fowler's excellent sixth novel to feature senior detectives Arthur Bryant and John May (after 2007's White Corridor). While the unit's members scheme to insure their professional survival, a serial killer is targeting middle-aged women who drop dead in pubs, apparently of natural causes. Bryant puts the investigation on his team's docket after realizing that he observed one of the victims, shortly before her demise, enter the Victoria Cross, a pub that hasn't existed for almost a century. Characters who could easily have been caricatures in lesser hands assume enough depth to make them both plausible and engaging. If this is indeed the last in the series as the conclusion suggests, then the versatile author has ended on a high note. Those who appreciate Fowler's special blend of the macabre, dark humor and impossible crime puzzles will wish they haven't seen the last of Bryant and May.
I particularly enjoyed the "blend of the macabre, dark humor and impossible crime puzzles" in this particular text. I'm not sure I particularly enjoyed the last chapter or two, which seemed only tangentially related in a rather obvious "let's throw in something that Da Vinci Code fans will like" way. Still, the characters of Bryant and May kept me engaged. Bryant I had pictured (physically) as Mr. Granger from Are You Being Served?. Not perhaps fair of me, but quite humorous anyway.
I would be extremely careful in recommending this novel, though. See, I'm an Anglophile--obsessively, and things like the history of London pubs absolutely fascinate me. So, this book was right up my alley. I enjoyed every digression into London's bibulous past. For those not interested in such history, there will be some recurrent sections of the book that are boring at best and downright irritating at worst. It depends on how much history you like in your literature. I quite enjoy learning about these pubs and the Victorian face of London. Someone who already knows this information or who is not interested in such history might find the text condescending in that way.
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