Bryant & May and the bleeding heart

The book starts off with a pair of teenagers, Romain Curtis and Shirone Estanza, on a date in St George's Gardens. Originally a graveyard, it is now mostly a garden, though it soon becomes obvious there are still bodies about:

"He saw the man standing above him, middle-aged, with greying hair and occluded eyes, clearly and irrevocably dead, dressed in his best black business suit, his arm still rising, the claw of his right hand extended as if to clutch at the living. Then the moon was unveiled from the clouds, highlighting his silvered pupils, his distended marbling flesh. The arm had risen high to point into the night sky, as if to transmit some dire warning."

I thought, "This is supposed to be a mystery, not a horror novel!" Well, it IS a mystery - a funny, fascinating, and very unusual one. I spent a good deal of my time laughing.

The dead man is identified as Thomas Wallace, who committed suicide a few days earlier. Someone disinterred him from his grave, but why? Not long afterwards, Romain Curtis is killed in what appears to be a deliberate hit-and-run accident. There are two more odd murders, two more bodies are dug up in St George's, and then there's the little matter of the seven ravens missing from the Tower of London. Legend has it that if the ravens ever leave the tower, England will fall. Are all these crimes connected or are they just coincidences?

When the police are faced with weird cases, they are assigned to the Peculiar Crimes Unit (PCU). Arthur Bryant and John May are the senior members of the Peculiar Crimes Unit (PCU). May is described as "an elegantly dressed man with neatly combed silver hair and an overcoat of navy wool." Bryant is his total opposite - "The remnants of Bryant’s hair had entered the new day without the benefit of a comb and thrust out horizontally from above his ears, lending him the appearance of a barn owl." Then there's this quote:

"Bryant made a theatrical show of thrusting his hands into his ratty overcoat, and pulled out a small black kitten. ‘Another one,’ he said absently. ‘They seem to be everywhere.’ He gently tucked the mewling fur-ball into his waistcoat."

One reviewer said the Bryant & May series is combination of "Law & Order," "The X-Files," and "Monty Python," which is a pretty accurate assessment. It CAN get serious at times - most notably with the situation of Thomas Wallace and his family, and Jack Renfield's daughter Sennen - but Fowler never lets things get too dark or weird or sad.

The writing is excellent. In fact, it's some of the best mystery writing I've read this year. Fowler does a great job of plotting. There are multiple sub-plots that all come together at the end, though not in the way you might expect. I did not suspect the actual killer until their identity was revealed. I loved Arthur Bryant - eccentric, old-fashioned, determined, rebellious, and brilliant. He's like an elderly Sherlock Holmes with an interest in the truly bizarre things of this world. When Bryant admits he isn't up to date on the current techniques, May refutes this, saying, "No, you're a touchstone. If others can't see that, it's their loss."

This is the first book in this series that I've read, and I will definitely be reading more. I highly recommend it to anyone who loves a good mystery, especially with a sense of humor.