Edgy, suspenseful, and darkly comic, here is the first novel in
a riveting new mystery series starring two cranky but brilliant old
detectives whose lifelong friendship was forged solving crimes for
the London Police Department's Peculiar Crimes Unit. In FULL DARK
HOUSE, Christopher Fowler tells the story of both their first and
last case--and how along the way the unlikely pair of crime
fighters changed the face of detection.

A present-day bombing rips through London and claims the life of
eighty-year-old detective Arthur Bryant. For his partner John May,
it means the end of a partnership that lasted over half-a-century
and an eerie echo back to the Blitz of World War II when they first
met. Desperately searching for clues to the killer's identity, May
finds his old friend's notes of their very first case and becomes
convinced that the past has returned...with a killing
vengeance.

It begins when a dancer in a risque new production of Orpheus in
Hell is found without her feet. Suddenly, the young detectives are
plunged in a bizarre gothic mystery that will push them to their
limits--and beyond. For in a city shaken by war, a faceless killer
is stalking London's theaters, creating his own kind of sinister
drama. And it will take Arthur Bryant's unorthodox techniques and
John May's dogged police work to catch a criminal whose ability to
escape detection seems almost supernatural--a murderer who even
decades later seems to have claimed the life of one of them...and
is ready to claim the other.

Filled with startling twists, unforgettable characters, and a
mystery that will keep you guessing, FULL DARK HOUSE is a witty,
heartbreaking, and all-too-human thriller about the hunt for an
inhuman killer.

© Copyright 2004 by Bantam, a division of Random House,
Inc.