Christopher Fowler - Page 1
First British Edition Doubleday (2006) |
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Ten-Second Staircase
A Bryant & May Mystery
British fiction's most enigmatic detectives since Holmes and Watson return in their most outrageously entertaining and intriguing adventure to date…
It is a crime tailor-made for the Met’s Peculiar Crimes Unit: a controversial contemporary artist murdered and displayed as part of her own outrageous installation. No suspects, no motive, no evidence - which means business as usual for the PCU’s decrepit and cantankerous detectives, Arthur Bryant and John May. But this time they have a witness - a twelve-year-old boy who swears the killer was a masked highwayman riding a black horse ...
In the face of others’ disbelief, Bryant and May take the sighting seriously - and then ‘the Highwayman’ is spotted again, at the scene of his next outlandish murder. Whatever the killer’s real identity, he seems intent on ridding London of various minor celebrities while becoming one himself. As the tabloids begin to create ‘Highwayman Fever’, Bryant and May, together with the newest member of the team - May’s agoraphobic granddaughter, April - find themselves baffled by a case that seems to involve everything from vicious artistic rivalries and sleazy sex to feuding street gangs and the Knights Templars. To crack it, they need to use every orthodox - and unorthodox - means at their disposal, including myth, witchcraft and the psychogeographic history of London’s ‘monsters’ past and present.
And if one unsolvable crime were not enough, it begins to look as though this case has disturbing links to a decades-old killing spree that nearly destroyed the partnership of Bryant and May once before ... and might again.
Praise for the BRYANT & MAY mysteries:
`As filled with tricks and sleights of hand as a magician’s sleeve… this is English gothic at its eccentric best; a combination of Ealing comedy and grand opera: witty, charismatic, occasionally; touching and with a genuine power to thrill.’ Joanne Harris
‘Very cleverly plotted … simultaneously scary and alluring.’ Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year
‘Witty, charming, and informed about London but - this is important - the storylines are
vivid, tough and have a hard edge’ The Time
‘An imaginative fun house of a world where sage minds go to expand their vistas and sharpen their wits ... life always seems livelier whenever Arthur Bryant and John May are on the case!’ New York Times Book Review
‘Fowler shocks and frightens, while making us laugh out loud. An original, erudite and exciting whodunit.’ Good Book Guide
‘Madcap mystery ... crazy and great fun for it’ Los Angeles Times
`A bizarre dark comedy of an investigation ... bawdy, unpredictable and at times hilarious, with a cast of wonderful grotesques.’ Guardian
`An evocatively reverential tribute to the genie… the clash of temperaments between Bryant & and May makes them great detectives.’ Time Out
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Paperback - Bantam (2006) |
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Seventy-Seven Clocks
A Bryant & May Mystery
The newspapers referred to it as the case of the seventy-seven clocks.
There was quite a fuss at the time. We got into terrible trouble.
Dear fellow, it was one of our most truly peculiar cases …
It was late in 1973. As strikes and blackouts ravaged the country during the Heath government’s’ Winter of Discontent’, members of a wealthy, aristocratic family were being disposed of in various grotesque ways - by reptile, by bomb, by barber. As the hours of daylight diminish towards Christmas, Arthur Bryant and John May of the Met’s Peculiar Crimes Unit know that time is the key - and time is running out for the family and the police. The ill-matched duo’s investigations lead them into a hidden world of class conflict, craftsmanship and the murky, clandestine loyalties of
big business. But what have seventy-seven ticking clocks got to do with it?
With Arthur Bryant at his rudest, John May at his most exasperated and a gallery of colourful, not to say bizarre, characters who could only make their home in a city like London, only now can the truth can be revealed.
‘Witty, sinuous and darkly comedic storytelling from a Machiavellian jokester.’
Guardian
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First British Edition Doubleday (2004) |
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The Water Room
A Bryant & May Mystery
Originally built to house the workers of Victorian London, Balaklava Street is now an oasis in the heart of Kentish Town and ripe for gentrification. But then the body of an elderly woman is found at Number 5. Her death would appear to have been peaceful but for the fact that her throat is full of river water. It falls to the Met’s Peculiar Crimes Unit, led by London’s longest-serving detectives, Arthur Bryant and John May, to search for something resembling a logical solution.
Their initial investigations draw a blank and Bryant’s attention is diverted into strange and arcane new territory, while May finds himself in hot water when he attempts to save the reputation of an academic whose knowledge of the city’s forgotten underground rivers looks set to ruin his career. In the meantime, the new owner of Number 5 is increasingly unsettled by the damp in the basement of her home, the particularly resilient spiders and the ghostly sound of rushing water ...
Pooling their information to investigate hitherto undiscovered secrets of the city, Bryant and May make some sinister connections and realize that, in a London filled with the rich, the poor and the dispossessed, there’s still something a desperate individual is willing to kill for - and kill again to protect. With the PCU facing an uncertain future, the death toll mounts and two of British fiction’s most enigmatic detectives must face madness, greed and revenge, armed only with their wits, their own idiosyncratic practices and a plentiful supply of boiled sweets, in a wickedly sinuous mystery that goes to the heart of every London home.
Artwork © James MacFarlane represented by Meiklejohn Illustration
| British Pbk Original - Serpents Tail (2004) |
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Demonized
Welcome to Christopher Fowler's ninth collection of stories of urban dread, designed to fill your waking dreams with dark fears and even darker laughter
Strange things don't only happen when you're asleep. They happen in daylight, in crowded cities, to anyone Things that seem innocent one minute are demonized the next, and here are seventeen new stories to prove it.
A journalist spends a nerve-wracking weekend in the company of Nazis. A tropical holiday takes a nasty turn thanks to a troupe of monkeys, and a waitress challenges a sinister customer in a night restaurant A tailor plots to escape his execution, London is overrun with rats, serial killers fall in love and revenge backfires on the unfaithful. As our lives and deaths grow ever stranger, housewives, students and executives all find themselves in situations that become increasingly disturbing.
Fowler's powerful narrative is subtly affecting and will make you think twice about the way you look at the world around you.
| Paperback - Bantam (2004) |
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Full Dark House
Bryant & May’s First Mystery
Arthur Bryant and John May of the Met’s little-known Peculiar Crimes Unit’ are London’s longest-serving detectives. When a bomb claims Bryant’s life, it ends a partnership that has lasted for over half a century.
Desperately searching for clues, to the killer’s identity, May becomes convinced that the answer is to be found in their very first assignment together. It was in London, during the Blitz, and it all began when a beautiful_ dancer in a steamy new production of Orpheus in. the Underworld was found without her feet...
And it was an investigation that would plunge the two young detectives into a bizarre gothic mystery - in pursuit of a faceless man who stalked the theatres of a nervous, beleaguered city already full of myth and rumour.
From the acclaimed author of Roofworld and Spanky comes a deliciously sinister drama in which two of British fiction’s most enigmatic detective heroes - Bryant and May - take centre stage in this, their first great case.
About The Author
Christopher Fowler is a novelist and scriptwriter best known for his dark urban fiction. He has written over 100 short stories in nine volumes, and fourteen novels. His first thriller was the bestselling Roofworld, now optioned as a New Line film. His subsequent books include Spanky, Psychoville and Calabash.
He is currently writing the Bryant & May series, six volumes of dark crime featuring two elderly detectives. His graphic novel for DC Comics was the critically acclaimed Menz Insana. He reviews for The Independent On Sunday, and writes for many others, including the BBC. His short story The Master Builder became a CBS movie starring Tippi Hedren and Marg Helgenberger. Left Hand Drive, won Best British Short Film. He was the 1998 recipient of the BFS Best Short Story Of The Year, for Wageslaves. In 2004, The Water Room was nominated for the CWA People’s Choice Award, Full Dark House won the BFS August Derleth Novel Of The Year Award 2004 and American Waitress won the BFS Best Short Story Of The Year 2004. The Green Man was nominated for a Bram Stoker award. In 2005 Breathe won Best Novella. The Master Builder became the feature Through The Eyes Of A Killer, starring Tippi Hedren, while Left Hand Drive won Best British Short film.
Christopher co-founded Creative Partnership, a company that creates movie posters, trailers and documentaries, producing film campaigns and working with directors like Bertolucci, Zeffirelli, Tarantino, Cronenberg, Loach, and Ridley Scott. He has created campaigns for thousands of films, including Moulin Rouge, Pulp Fiction, Gladiator, Trainspotting, Star Wars and King Kong. He wrote comedy for BBC radio and once released a truly disastrous Christmas single.
He reviews for the Independent on Sunday, and has written articles and columns for a variety of magazines including Time Out, The Third Alternative, Smoke, Pure, Dazed And Confused, Big Issue and many others.
Recent short stories have appeared in The Time Out Book Of London Short Stories 2, The New English Library Book Of Internet Stories, Dark Terrors 5, Best New Horror (many volumes), London Noir, Neon Lit., A Book Of Two Halves, Vengeance Is, Love In Vein 2, Destination Unknown, 100 Fiendish Little Frightmares, The Time Out Book Of New York Stories and many others.
His favourite authors include E M Forster, Virginia Woolf, Dickens, Evelyn Waugh, David Nobbs, Peter Tinniswood, Alan Bennett and Kyril Bonfiglioli. He was influenced by Mervyn Peake enough to attempt his own Gormenghast stories, entitled Tales From Britannica Castle.
Christopher Robert Fowler – In His Own Words
I was born in Greenwich, London, in 1953. We’re all Londoners in my family (all centred around the river and its activities). I have a brother seven years younger. I lived in Los Angeles from 1980 – 1984. I’m a self-confessed film-obsessive I also design graphics and paint. I possess no numerical ability whatsoever.
I attended Colfes, one of the old London guild schools founded in the early 1600s, studied languages including Russian, left in 1972 and decided to train as a advertising copywriter.
I wrote disastrously as part of a comedy team for the BBC, but did a few things I always wanted to do, including cutting a record, writing a stage show, creating a graphic novel for DC Comics, and selling a collection of short stories on my first try (I still wonder how that happened).
After working in half a dozen agencies, including J Walter Thompson, I teamed with a producer and began creating campaigns for movies. I went to LA to head up an office in Beverly Hills, but did not really enjoy my time there, and eventually headed home. We expanded with a full art studio and edit suites, and gained a reputation for opening small ‘problem’ films like The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Lover, Reservoir Dogs, Trainspotting, Moulin Rouge and the Mike Leigh films. I loved working on the Bond films because we travelled the world. I’ve fulfilled a few childhood fantasies; I’ve appeared as a villain in a Batman graphic novel, I’ve stood in as James Bond for Pierce Brosnan, I’m in the legendary Pan Books of Horror. I’ve written scripts for Jude Law and Jonny Lee Miller. I now split my time between London, and the South coast of France just outside Monte Carlo, where I have a house.
Writing Career: I have a peculiar mix of literary influences and/or mentors, including JG Ballard, BS Johnson, John Collier, Ray Bradbury, Dickens, EM Forster, Evelyn Waugh, Tennessee Williams, Virginia Woolf, Magnus Mills, Alan Bennett, Joyce Carol Oates, Henry James, Joe Haldeman, Peter Barnes, Alan Sillitoe, and Keith Waterhouse (Billy Liar is in my top ten books).
I hate horror’s late misanthropic streak, and love stories that create fatally flawed humans. I don’t like the ghettoisation of the genre, and many of the stories I consider to be horrific do not fit into easy horror categories. I tend to think that literary horror passed through an experimental golden period in 60’s Britain, and don’t enjoy much ‘comfortable’ mainstream horror fiction. This creates a problem for me, because I drift across the genre into other areas, and it confuses readers looking for a consistent backlist. I have trouble with the supernatural, and tend to avoid it now because reality holds more useful keys to unsettling psychological situations.
If you look for recurrent themes in my fiction you’ll find pairs and opposites, usually two characters complementing or cancelling each other’s personalities. This stems from my habit of creating warring forces within single characters and them splitting them into twos. Mostly urban settings, present-day, blackly comic situations. Psychoville is my most overtly biographical book (to the point where my parents took great offence), but elements of my life are present in Soho Black, which was written as a catharsis just after I survived a near-death experience, and Calabash, about then horrible seaside days I had as a child.
My biggest problem arises in the choice of subject matter; how to balance real life with grand guignol, which I am strongly drawn towards, but I think I’ve found a way to do it with the Bryant & May books.
Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.
White Corridor
(Doubleday,
2007)
Old Devil Moon
(Serpents Tail,
2007)
Ten-Second Staircase
(Doubleday,
2006)
Sep 06
Seventy-Seven Clocks
(Doubleday,
2005)
Bantam Pbk Sep 06
The Water Room
(Doubleday,
2004)
( Bryant & May)
Breathe
(Telos,
2004)
Demonized
Short Stories
(Serpents Tail Pbk,
2004)
Plastic
(Little,Brown,
2003)
Full Dark House
(Doubleday,
2003)
Bantam Pbk Sep 04
( Bryant & May)
Calabash
(Warner,
2000)
timewarner Pbk May 00
The Devil in Me
Short Stories
(Serpents Tail,
2000)
Serpents Tail Pbk Feb 04
Uncut
Short Stories
(Warner,
1999)
Personal Demons
Short Stories
(Serpents Tail Pbk,
1998)
Personal Demons
Short Stories
(
1998)
Soho Black
(Warner Pbk,
1998)
Menz Insana
(
1997)
Disturbia
(Warner,
1997)
Warner Pbk 1997
Psychoville
(Warner,
1995)
Spanky
(Little,Brown,
1994)
Darkest Day
(Little,Brown,
1993)
Sharper Knives
Short Stories
(Century Hutchinson,
1992)
Red Bride
(Little,Brown,
1992)
Rune
(Century Hutchinson,
1990)
Century Hutchinson Pbk 1990
The Bureau of Lost Souls
Short Stories
(Century Hutchinson,
1990)
Century Hutchinson Pbk 1990
Flesh Wounds
Short Stories
(
1989)
Roofworld
(Century Hutchinson,
1988)
City Jitters 2
Short Stories
(Dell,
1988)
City Jitters
Short Stories
(Sphere,
1986)
The Ultimate Party Book
(Unwin,
1985)
How To Impersonate Famous People
(Quartet,
1984)
Ten-Second Staircase
WebPage: 
by Christopher Fowler
