The Victoria Vanishes
A Peculiar Crimes Unit Mystery
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4.2 • 35 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
It’s a case tailor-made for the Peculiar Crimes Unit. A lonely hearts killer is targeting middle-aged women at some of England’s most well-known pubs—including one torn down eighty years ago. What’s more, Arthur Bryant happened to see one of the victims only moments before her death at the pub that doesn’t exist. Indeed, this case is littered with clues that defy everything the veteran detectives know about the habits of serial killers, the methodology of crime, and the odds of making an arrest. Now, with the public on the verge of panic and their superiors determined to shut the PCU down for good, Detectives Bryant and May must rise to the occasion in defense of two great English traditions—the pub and the Peculiar Crimes Unit.
That’s easier said than done. A lost funeral urn, the eighteenth-century mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, the Knights Templars, the secret history of pubs, and the discovery of an astounding religious relic may be enough to convince one of the pair to take back his resignation letter. But with Bryant consulting a memory specialist and May encountering a brush with mortality, do the Peculiar Crimes Unit’s two living legends have enough life left to stop a murderous conspiracy…and a deadly cupid targeting one of their own.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Officialdom casts a skeptical eye on the unorthodox crime solving of London's Peculiar Crimes Unit in Fowler's excellent sixth novel to feature senior detectives Arthur Bryant and John May (after 2007's White Corridor). While the unit's members scheme to insure their professional survival, a serial killer is targeting middle-aged women who drop dead in pubs, apparently of natural causes. Bryant puts the investigation on his team's docket after realizing that he observed one of the victims, shortly before her demise, enter the Victoria Cross, a pub that hasn't existed for almost a century. Characters who could easily have been caricatures in lesser hands assume enough depth to make them both plausible and engaging. If this is indeed the last in the series as the conclusion suggests, then the versatile author has ended on a high note. Those who appreciate Fowler's special blend of the macabre, dark humor and impossible crime puzzles will wish they haven't seen the last of Bryant and May.
