Monday 18 March 2019

Watching the Detectives



So, as we greet another adventure featuring the surreal detectives from the pen of Chris Fowler in the upcoming “The Lonely Hour”, Shots asked the author a little about these two iconic characters.

This may come as a shock but I don’t think of the Bryant & May mysteries (seventeen and counting) as a series. They’re a chance for me to write every kind of crime novel I can imagine, and to emulate some of my hero(ine)s. So far, I’ve tackled locked-room puzzles, whydunnits, how-will-he-get-away-with-its, races against time, comic capers, Christie and Crispin homages, and a dozen other crime sub-genres. I haven’t got around to gluing little clues into the pages as Dennis Wheatley’s publishers did but it can only be a matter of time. As a result, the books work well out of sequence because each is a fresh adventure.

The latest, ‘Bryant & May: The Lonely Hour’, is a darker, somewhat grittier adventure for my senior detectives. And it’s not a whodunnit, as I let the reader know the killer’s identity from the start, but there are questions about how and why, so there are still surprises to the very last page.

Each book feels like a new beginning, except that I get to use the same characters, and it really is like greeting old friends who have become so real to me over time, perhaps because each one is based at least in part on someone I know.

The new novel is about a man who knows what people fear most, and always strikes at 4:00am, the loneliest hour of the night, when we are all at our most vulnerable. To catch him Arthur Bryant changes his unit’s shifts to night-time, causing all kinds of havoc. It gave me a chance to explore the city at night and investigate murder, arson, kidnap, blackmail, bats and the psychological effects of loneliness on city-dwellers.

My research required me to chat to strangers hanging around in the street at 4:00am, many of whom didn’t make much sense. It’s a time when all the normal rules are upended, which only made the writing more interesting!

More information about these surreal detectives is available HERE



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