I would like for you to make BRYANT & MAY AND THE BLEEDING HEART the next book you read. You will not be sorry. It is one of the literary world’s great mysteries that Christopher Fowler isn’t a household name on the order of… Well, we won’t get into all of that, but his Peculiar Crimes Unit series should be selling in the millions with copies passed through to millions more. These stories are witty, challenging, engrossing, informative and incredibly well-written.

Picture a television series that is a rough mash-up of “Law & Order,” “The X-Files” and “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” without the excesses of each and better than all combined, and you have the Peculiar Crimes Unit. There were times when, reading passages of this latest installment, I sensed Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Ed McBain and Agatha Christie nodding in approval, standing just over Fowler’s shoulder. Yes, the series is that good.

"I would like for you to make BRYANT & MAY AND THE BLEEDING HEART the next book you read. You will not be sorry.... These stories are witty, challenging, engrossing, informative and incredibly well-written."

There really isn’t one particular element that rises above the others in BRYANT & MAY AND THE BLEEDING HEART or any of the other Peculiar Crimes Unit (PCU) books. There is humor, usually within the first few pages. There are factoids aplenty about London and its surrounding environs, incorporated as neatly and solidly into the storyline as the cornerstone of a brick and mortar building. What the reader comes for, though, would be the odd couple pairing of Arthur Bryant and John May, the very senior detectives of the PCU, which deals with cases that represent a risk to public order and morale. May is orderly, methodical and logical. Bryant isn’t. During an investigation, Bryant goes from A to F to a land somewhere in front of A before arriving at B.

Somehow the two of them discern a solution to a seemingly unsolvable crime, with the valuable assistance from the other members of the PCU, who serve as occasionally leaky ballast for the somewhat unstable investigative boat that is the good ship PCU. Of course, the powers that be in London’s law enforcement regard the PCU as an embarrassing anachronism but can’t dissolve the unit; its success rate makes that impossible. However, the imminent threat of disbandment is a thread throughout the series.

Thus we come back to BRYANT & MAY AND THE BLEEDING HEART, which presents one of the most challenging set of puzzles in the series to date. It begins with a teenage couple on the make in an all-but-abandoned cemetery who witnesses one of the not-so-dearly departed arise from the grave. The deceased, an apparent suicide victim, may have been buried alive, or he may have been involuntarily disinterred --- it’s hard to tell. That would be sinister enough, but when the male half of the make-out couple who witnessed the resurrection is himself killed by a hit-and-run driver, and apparently deliberately so, the case takes on a new investigative intensity.

Meanwhile, in a wonderful variation of the classic “locked room” staple of mystery novels, the seven ravens residing in the Tower of London have gone missing, portending the fall of England. An old frenemy of Bryant’s is at the heart of that case, and he has Bryant stymied, at least temporarily, and concerned (understandably so) with mortality issues. The solutions to these mysteries are what make this book such a joy to read. The PCU follows the evidentiary trail to the legendary Bleeding Heart Yard as more bodies are unearthed and the fate of what is left of the Empire seemingly hangs in the balance.

What makes Fowler’s accomplishments with these PCU mysteries so impressive is that his literary career has spanned three decades and over 30 novels in multiple genres. Yet his latest book contains some of his best writing. Fowler shows no signs of tiring or slowing down, which is one more thing for which we may be thankful at this time of year. Show your appreciation --- not to mention your good taste --- by becoming acquainted with this series and jumping on now.