Bryant & May

A far cry from the world of Wodehouse, perhaps, but written in the same spirit, are Maggie Armitage’s weekly text messages to me. Here are a few from this week. Be thankful you’re getting the short versions. I like to think of her writing in the same vein as EM Delafield’s ‘Diary of a Provincial […]

First, a few details about the book which is landing here in just three weeks’ time… ‘The Lonely Hour‘ is the biggest Bryant & May novel yet, and sees the detectives back in the present day after the sixties romp of ‘Hall of Mirrors’. In fact it picks up right where Wild Chamber ended, with […]

In Which Mr May Makes A Mistake And Mr Bryant Goes Into The Dark It’s Bryant & May’s 17th outing, not counting their graphic novel, and their longest novel. We’re in central London just after Christmas, in the present day, where the friendless and lonely are being picked off by a man with a plan. […]

Well, this is nice. The lovely peeps at the Dead Good Reader Awards have nominated my detectogenarians Bryant & May for the Best Detective Duo Award, alongside Elly Griffiths for her characters Ruth Galloway and Harry Nelson, Tess Gerritsen’s Rizzoli and Isles, Sarah Hilary’s Marnie Rome and Noah Jake, Syd Moore’s Rosie Strange and Sam Stone, and P J Tracy’s Gino and Magozzi. […]

No, not central London, where it’s currently hotter than Istanbul, but on our bi-annual week-long sailing trip around the Turkish coast. If previous trips are anything to go by, wi-fi will be spotty but I’ll post whenever I can. To set the mood, here’s there opening of ‘Bryant & May Ahoy!’ from ‘London’s Glory’, the […]

Believe me, this is not an exercise in self-aggrandisement, but an attempt to discover where I should take the characters next. I will shortly be presenting ideas to my publisher that will bring the old boys’ adventures up to a neat and full twenty volumes. Although you currently have ‘Strange Tide’ in paperback and ‘Wild […]

Everything old is new again; I can’t read another novel set in the Blitz unless somebody brings something new to the party, and I’m getting tired of books set in the mid-19th century. And yet there are still many stories to be told. I saw Gurinder Chadha’s ‘Viceroy’s House’ yesterday, about how India’s partition came […]

Morse got there. Vera did too, and Wallender and everyone from Lord Peter Whimsey to the wonderfully eccentric Mrs Bradley – they all ended up as TV series. You can’t move without falling over Sherlocks, and even Christie’s boring Tuppences had their own show. The question I get asked on a daily basis is ‘Why […]

Bryant & May are back! Although Bryant’s going barmy and May’s out of action, so who will find out why a young woman was chained in the Thames? This is the longest novel in the series so far, and hopefully answers all of your questions, although I’ve been very careful to make sure that ‘Strange […]

I often get asked about this book, and a couple of readers have asked me why it’s not being included in the complete run of e-books coming later this year. When the Bryant & May novel Seventy-Seven Clocks appeared in hardback a few years ago, it caused a bit of a rumpus. In the planning […]