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Bryant and May: The Bleeding Heart by Christopher Fowler (view source)
Revision as of 13:12, 16 August 2020
, 13:12, 16 August 2020no edit summary
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''The Bleeding Heart'' is the eleventh outing for Fowler's distinctive detectives from the Peculiar Case Unit. If you've been along for the ride so far you'll either have fallen in love with them, or really not be able to see the joy of them. Either way, this review isn't going to tell you anything you don't already know, other than, yes, Fowler's still on form.
Forgive me then, if I address the rest of my thoughts to those who've yet to stumble into the is this backwater of the Metropolitan Police.
Except, it's the Met no more. The PCU has been transferred to the City of London police. Most people think of ''the Met'' when they think of policing in London and indeed the Metropolitan Police Force does have most of the responsibility for policing what we think of as ''London'', but this is one of those areas where England does its best to emulate our transatlantic cousins and have a jurisdictional anomaly. Or should that be anachrony?
The City of London is a very precisely defined area. Once known as 'the square mile' because that is about what it covered, it is the old heart of the financial district. It has a workforce of about 300,000 and a resident population of about 7,400. Policing here is not what it might be elsewhere.
White -collar crime is obviously the big risk. Fraud. Insider trading. All the stuff that probably gets shunted up to the Serious Fraud Office or whatever has most recently replaced them.
The 750 full -time coppers of the 1.1 square miles (if we're going to be accurate) may be used to a quiet life.
Or they may not… but certainly , that was the notion that the PCU had when they heard they were being transferred from the Met. They thought that maybe, now, they'd get left alone to do what it is they do best.
They thought without Orion Banks.
Ignoring her is precisely what they all intend to do while investigating the two cases to hand.
First, and to the fore, is the case of the walking dead. A young man and his girl dip into St Georges Gardens for a spot of late -night star-gazing and are witness instead to a corpse rising out of its grave and walking. It also seems to have an interest in Ursa Minor, which makes even less sense.
So far, so Hammer Horror, as instigated by lying in the damp grass and smoking the dried kind.
And if you don't find an intrinsic delight in the very idea, then I'd probably have to say: don't go anywhere near this book.
But then, you won't have got this far through the review unless you share the relevant mind-set mindset both to appreciate the absurdity and to see how not completely disconnected it all is to what we call 'the real world'.
Fowler makes his stories work because for all their frolics and frivolousness, they are grounded both in plausibility in our actual real-life London and also in the unfortunate absurdity of our wider systems of operation. I wouldn't say for sure that I've hear heard someone stand in one of my management seminars saying exactly what Ms Orion Banks says to her uncomprehending officers – but I will own up to having found myself trying to write in a similar vein to get it past the powers that be!
The dark thread in his novels is well over-woven with light and laughter, but it is there if you care to look for it. There is a strand of real crime which is hateful, and cruel, and wrong, and which threatens the public in ways they might not appreciate. There are young people leading hopeless lives. And ethical businessmen and lawyers caught up in corruption beyond their means to manage or escape from.
But the light and laughter comes come not only from the parody of such horrors, but also from taking a genuine delight in English eccentricity. Many of the more bizarre characters he throws in our path may not really exist as pathfinders for our police forces, but they do exist. If you're lucky you will stumble across them.
And Fowler treats them kindly. He will let us enjoy their 'style' but never stoops to mocking their take on the world.
He adheres to puzzle-genre rules. You can (if you're sad enough) read this a straightforward detective fiction. The clues and herrings are scattered in your path. Treat it as a Christie and it works.
To enjoy at its best , however, prepare yourself for a touch of the Douglas Adams… Of course , the station is littered with black kittens. They don't have any role to play. They're just there. And why shouldn't a Detective sleep in Andy Pandy pyjamas and have his landlady bring him tea in bed, and grow his own tobacco under his desk or have peas for lunch?
Beautifully bonkers, surprisingly surreal, but not entirely unbelievable.
Thoughts on Bryant and May's previous outing can be read here [[Bryant and May and the Invisible Code by Christopher Fowler|ryant and May and the Invisible Code]], or for comedy crime on the other side of the pond , we'd recommend [[Bloodthirsty by Marshall Karp]]. [[Christopher Fowler's Bryant & May Books in Chronological Order]]
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