UNITED KINGDOM AUTHOR · FICTION · POLICE
Christopher Fowler
Also known as: CHRISTOPHER FOWLER
Christopher Fowler would make a good serial killer. He's charming and English and lives in a white penthouse with a view of St Paul’s Cathedral, and you'd think butter wouldn't melt in his mouth until you read his dark urban fiction — 17 novels and over 120 short stories so far. His œuvre divides into black comedy, horror, mystery, the odd revolting death and a set of novels unclassifiable enough to have publishers tearing their hair out. Emerging from a film industry background, he has come painfully close to having movies made of his novels Roofworld, Spanky, Psychoville and Calabash, but oddly it was his short story “The Master Builder” that became a film called Through the Eyes of a Killer, starring Tippi Hedren and Marg Helgenberger. He is currently writing the ‘Bryant & May’ mysteries, featuring two elderly, argumentative detectives, but his latest book, Paperboy is autobiographical. His graphic novel for DC Comics was the critically acclaimed Menz Insana. He also achieved three pathetic schoolboy fantasies, releasing a pop single, being used as the model for a Batman villain, and acting as a stand-in for James Bond.
'He's just an innocent,' said Steve, lighting a grubby dog-end.
— from Demonized, 2003
Most acclaimed
Seventy-seven clocks
The odd couple of detection--the brilliant but cranky detectives of London's Peculiar Crimes Unit--return in a tense, atmospheric new thriller that keeps you guessing until the final page. This time Bryant and May are up against a series of bizarre murders that defy human understanding--and a killer no human hand may be able to stop.A mysterious stranger in outlandish Edwardian garb defaces a painting in the National Gallery. Then a guest at the exclusive Savoy Hotel is fatally bitten by what appears to be a marshland snake. An outbreak of increasingly bizarre crimes has hit London--and, fittingly, come to the attention of the Peculiar Crimes Unit. Art vandalism, an exploding suspect, pornography, rat poison, Gilbert and Sullivan musicals, secret societies...and not a single suspect in sight. The killer they're chasing has a dark history, a habit of staying hidden, and time itself on his side. Detectives John May and Arthur Bryant may have finally met their match, and this time they're really working against the clock....From the Paperback edition.
Ten Second Staircase
2006
It's a crime tailor-made for the Peculiar Crimes Unit: a controversial artist is murdered and displayed as part of her own outrageous installation. No suspects, no motive, no evidence--it's business as usual for the Unit's cantankerous founding partners, Arthur Bryant and John May. But this time they have an eyewitness. According to twelve-year-old Luke Tripp, the killer was a cape-clad highwayman atop a black stallion. As implausible as the boy's story sounds, Bryant and May take it seriously when "The Highwayman" is spotted again, striking a dramatic pose at the scene of his next outlandish murder. Whatever the killer's real identity, he seems intent on killing off a string of minor celebrities while becoming one himself. As the tabloids look to make a quick bundle on "Highwayman Fever," Bryant and May, along with the newest member of the Unit, May's agoraphobic granddaughter, April, find themselves sorting out a case involving an unlikely combination of artistic rivalries, sleazy sex affairs, the Knights Templars, and street gang feuds. To do it, they're going to have to use every orthodox--and unorthodox--means at their disposal, including myth, witchcraft, and the psychogeographic history of the city's "monsters," past and present.And if one unsolvable crime weren't enough, this case has disturbing links to a decades-old killing spree that nearly destroyed the partnership of Bryant and May once before...and may again. The Peculiar Crimes Unit is one murder away from being closed down for good--and that murder could be their own.From the Hardcover edition.