First
sentence: There was a witch around here somewhere.
A young woman dies in St. Bride’s Church—there
is no apparent cause of death. Bryant and May are called to
the office of Oskar Kasavian; the man determined to shut down
the Peculiar Crimes Unit. However, that’s not why they
were summoned. Instead, he wants them to find out why his
wife, an Albanian Muslim, has been acting strangely. A second
death seems to link the two situations and sends Bryant and
May on a fascinating trail.
From the very first, you know you’re
in for something unusual and quite delightful. However, light
soon turns to dark and a sense of dread.
Although the PUC and filled with interesting
characters, this book puts a greater focus on Arthur Bryant,
the eldest and most peculiar of the PUC. He is well described
as being…”as much a part of London as the hobbled
Tower raven, a Piccadilly barber, a gunman in the Blind Begger,
and he would not be moved from his determined path. He was,
everyone agreed, an annoying, impossible and indispensible
fellow who had long ago decided that it was better to be disliked
than forgotten.” Bryant often seeing things in situations
that others do not.
Crime Scene Manager/Info Tech Dan Banbury
also receives more time in this book. It is fascinating to
follow him through his Sherlockian forensic evidence search.
There are interesting observations on class
barriers and on poverty. Fowler perfectly captures the snarkiness
of which the wives of important men are capable and building
their own hierarchy based on their husband’s success.
Fowler very cleverly takes seemingly disparate
threads and slowly weaves them together. Even though the plot
may seem to wander a bit, there is method to the madness as
it slowly circles nicely around and ends with a very satisfactory
close.
The
Invisible Code is a delightful mystery filled with humor,
fascinating details and a very good surprise at the end.Reviews
of other titles in this series
Full
Dark House #1
The
Water Room #2
The Memory of Blood # 9 [review1]
[review
2] [review
3]
Invisible Code #10 [review
1] [review
2]
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