Official: Bryant & May Set To Return

The morning sky is still red but the week has started with a bang as news reaches me that Bryant & May have been given the go-ahead in the US for a further two novels! My American friends are still waiting for the arrival of ‘Bryant & May and the Invisible Code’, but this will definitely be followed by further adventures. In a week’s time I should know whether they are also set to continue in their beautiful UK editions, too, so watch this space.

First up will be ‘Bryant & May and the Bleeding Heart’, in which the decrepit detectives investigate the case of a man found dead in a cemetery.

I’ll rephrase that.

A man thought dead, then found alive, then dead because – hell, you’ll just have to wait and see how Bryant & May deal with what appears to be the return of Resurrectionists in London graveyards, and how Henry VIII and some mummified cats feature in the hunt for a killer. All I’ll tell you for now is that Mr Merry, the PCU’s new nemesis, turns up, and that Arthur Bryant gets caught with a shovel in his hand at midnight.

This will be followed by ‘Bryant & May and the Burning Man’, in which Bryant, incapacitated at home, must help the unit solve the case of a man burned alive in an old cinema. When he starts searching through his past investigations to find a clue he knows he’s seen, we get the inside story on some of the PCU’s earlier unseen cases as the detectives find themselves caught up in a deadly Guy Fawkes Night.

I’m going to have a lot of fun writing these, and will start as soon as I’ve been given deadlines, and have finished my current project. To celebrate their return, here are our sleuths heading into a graveyard courtesy of the excellent Keith Page, whose sterling work on ‘The Bryant & May Casebook’ will now be seen in January. Word to the publishers – it was meant to be a Christmas book, guys.