It’s getting late. I want to share my knowledge of London with you, if I can remember any of it. So says Arthur Bryant. He and John May are the nation’s oldest serving detectives. Who better to reveal its secrets? Why does this rainy, cold, gray city capture so many imaginations? Could its very unreliability hold the key to its longevity? The detectives are joined by their boss, Raymond Land, and some of their most disreputable friends. Each character gives us a short tour of odd buildings, odder characters, lost venues, forgotten disasters, confusing routes, dubious gossip, illicit pleasures and hidden pubs. They make all sorts of connections --- and show us why it’s almost impossible to separate fact from fiction in London.

When 91-year-old Amelia Hoffman dies in her top-floor flat on a busy London road, it’s considered an example of what has gone wrong with modern society: she slipped through the cracks in a failing system. But detectives Arthur Bryant and John May of the Peculiar Crimes Unit have their doubts. Mrs. Hoffman was once a government security expert, though no one can quite remember her. When a link emerges between the old lady and a diplomat trying to flee the country, it seems that an impossible murder has been committed. Mrs. Hoffman wasn’t the only one at risk. Bryant is convinced that other forgotten women with hidden talents are also in danger. And, curiously, they all own models of London Bridge.

On a spring morning in London’s Strand, the Speaker of the House of Commons is nearly killed by a van. It’s an absurd near-death experience, but the government is more interested in investigating the Speaker’s state of mind just prior to his accident. The task is given to the Peculiar Crimes Unit --- the only problem being that the unit no longer exists. Against impossible odds, the team is reassembled, and once again what should be a simple case becomes a lunatic farrago involving arson, suicide, magicians, academics, and a race to catch a killer with a master plan involving London churches. Joining their team this time is Sidney, a young woman with no previous experience, plenty of attitude --- and a surprising secret.

When a man is found hanging upside down inside a willow tree on Hampstead Heath, surrounded by a baffling assortment of occult objects, the Peculiar Crimes Unit is called in to investigate. Was this a botched satanic ritual pulled off by bored teenagers, a gang initiation, or the work of a mastermind with grander intentions? Bryant and May set off in search of answers. When another body is pulled from the river at dawn, it becomes clear that a killer lurks in the night. To catch him, the PCU switches to graveyard shifts, but the team still comes up short. As they explore a night city where the normal rules do not apply, they’re drawn deeper into a case that involves murder, arson, kidnapping, blackmail, loneliness and bats.

After accidentally sinking a barge painted like the Yellow Submarine, detectives Arthur Bryant and John May are relegated to babysitting Monty Hatton-Jones, the star prosecution witness in the trial of a disreputable developer whose prefabs are prone to collapse. The job for the demoted detectives? Keep the whistle-blower safe for one weekend. The task proves unexpectedly challenging when their unruly charge insists on attending a party at the vast estate Tavistock Hall. With falling stone gryphons, secret passageways, rumors of a mythical beast, and an all-too-real dismembered corpse, the bedeviled policemen soon find themselves with “a proper country house murder” on their hands.

Helen Forester takes her West Highland terrier for a walk in her street’s private garden. But minutes later she is dead, strangled yet peacefully laid out on the path, her dog nowhere to be found. The only other person in the locked space is the gardener, who finds the body and calls the police. He expects proper cops to arrive, but what he gets are Bryant, May and the wily members of the Peculiar Crimes Unit. Before the detectives can make any headway on the case, a second woman is discovered in a public park, murdered in nearly identical fashion. Bryant and May have to think and act fast to save innocent lives, the fate of the city’s parks, and the very existence of the PCU.

Along the River Thames, the body of a woman has been discovered chained to a stone post and left to drown. “The Bride in the Tide,” as the London press gleefully dubs her, has the Peculiar Crimes Unit stumped. Why wouldn’t the killer simply dump her body in the river as so many do? Arthur Bryant wonders if the answer lies in the mythology of the Thames itself. Unfortunately, the venerable detective seems to be losing his grip on reality. John May fears the worst, as Bryant starts hallucinating that he’s traveled back in time to solve the case. As more bodies are pulled from the river’s depths, May and the rest of the PCU find themselves in over their heads.

Enraged by a scandal involving a corrupt financier accused of insider trading, demonstrators are rioting outside the Findersbury Private Bank. But when someone hurls a Molotov cocktail at the bank’s front door, killing a homeless man on its steps, Bryant, May and the rest of the Peculiar Crimes Unit is called in. Is this an act of protest gone terribly wrong? Or a devious, premeditated murder? Their investigation heats up when a second victim is reported dead in similar fiery circumstances. May discovers the latest victim has ties to the troubled bank, and Bryant refuses to believe this is mere coincidence.

A teenager sees a dead man rise from his grave --- and moments later is killed in a sudden hit-and-run accident. Seven ravens housed in the impenetrable fortress that is the Tower of London vanish without a trace --- and legend has it that when the ravens leave, the city will fall. Arthur Bryant and John May must figure out how these two inexplicable, seemingly unrelated mysteries fit together as they begin an investigation that finds them confronting a group of latter-day body snatchers and exploring the corridors of an eerie funeral parlour, all to unearth the truth behind the gruesome legend of Bleeding Heart Yard.

Bryant and May, two of the sharpest minds in all of London, tackle one of the most confounding cases of their storied --- and eccentric --- careers. An ill-timed death, a powerful curse, a mad dowager, and a dead photographer are just a few of the ingredients in this puzzling stew. And so begins an investigation that will test the members of the Peculiar Crimes Unit to their limits.

For the crew of the New Strand Theatre, the play The Two Murderers seems less performance than prophecy when a cast party ends in the shocking death of the theater owner’s son. The crime scene is most unusual, even for Bryant and May. In a locked bedroom without any trace of fingerprints or blood, the only sign of disturbance is a gruesome life-size puppet of Mr. Punch laying on the floor.

In 1837, less than a month after her 18th birthday, Alexandrina Victoria --- sheltered, small in stature, and female --- became Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. Yet from the moment William IV died, the young Queen startled everyone: abandoning her hated first name in favor of Victoria; insisting, for the first time in her life, on sleeping in a room apart from her mother; resolute about meeting with her ministers alone. Drawing on Victoria’s diaries as well as her own brilliant gifts for history and drama, Daisy Goodwin, brings the young queen even more richly to life in this magnificent novel.