shelved // bryant & may off the rails

let me preface this book review with a few facts: i love the london underground. disproportionately so. and i love british mysteries (my favorite undergrad class as an english major was british detective fiction - best.class.ever).

so, when christopher fowler's newest book in the peculiar crimes unit mystery series came out, and i saw that the majority of the action took place in and around the london underground, i was a wee bit giddy, to say the least. and last week's snow and ice spectacular provided the perfect cozy atmosphere for heading underground.

bryant & may off the rails is the eighth in fowler's series and features veteran partners arthur bryant and john may. the duo's modes and mindsets for solving crimes are completely contrary: may thrives on technology, facts, and forensics, while bryant embraces unorthodox avenues of investigation, including consulting witches, studying magic tricks, and researching ancient societies. like most odd couples, they just click.

the mystery revolves around king's cross underground station, an escaped murderer (the elusive mr. fox), and a group of flatmates, all of whom attend university college london. several accidents (or are they murders?) begin to take place under the streets of bustling north london. did the same person push a single mother down the escalators and stab a metal skewer through an ex-junkie's neck? who's hiding something about the disappearance of one of the ucl students? all is satisfyingly solved by the eccentric detectives of the peculiar crimes unit.

i fell hard for this book and devoured it in a few short sittings for two reasons (besides the fact that i'm a fan of the series and the genre): a) the copious references to the myths and history of the london underground and b) the north london location.

every time i travel to london, i make a conscious decision to alight at new tube stations, look around, and take a picture (if i'm feeling brave - it is london and there are pretty strict anti-terrorist photography laws). every aspect of the london underground fascinates me: the history, the art, the social implications, the traffic flow... i'm really nerding out here - please don't judge. my favorite tourist stop in london is the london transport museum in covent garden and my favorite pastime is just riding the tube and people watching. so much love for the rails.

london transport museum in covent garden

thanks to this book, i have a new activity planned for my next trip: tube challenges. the book glosses over what sound like pretty rad challenges involving the underground, including visiting tube stops in alphabetical order from a-w (there are no x, y, or z stations), the circle line bottle challenge, and visiting all 270 stations. heaven. if you're a complete underground fanatic like me, you might enjoy this chap's plan to set a new world record.

okay, time to zip it on the underground. now let's talk about the locale, shall we? my absolute favorite area of london is north: islington, camden, marylebone, regent's park. and on and on and on. i love the houses, i love the vibe, i love the scenery. i just love it. and the last time i went across the pond i just happened to stay in the vicinity of university college london. in fact, several of the street names thrown about in the book are the streets i wandered: euston, grower, tottenham court road (my absolute favorite street name ever).

camden row houses. pretty much my dream street.


at one point, the characters were standing at the corner of grower street and torrington place, which just happens to be where i turned everyday on my way to the goodge street station. there's nothing quite like the strange, nerdy thrill of knowing exactly where a character is in the world, geographically speaking.

i'm easily pleased, if you can't tell.

shelved // tana french

about a month ago, we (we being the library where i work, of course) got in a new paperback copy of in the woods by irish author tana french. i keep a small notebook at my desk for jotting down the titles of books i'd like to read; because i catalog books most days, i see an awful lot that i would like to read, including this particular novel, which had been on my list for quite awhile. i couldn't resist the attraction of a fresh, clean, unread trade paperback (because sometimes [read: quite often] paperbacks come back smelling like cigarettes, urine, mold, etc.), so i took the book home and began reading.

i was quickly drawn into french's story of a boy who disappeared in the woods with his friends only to be discovered hours later, his friends nowhere in sight, clinging to a tree in blood-soaked shoes. twenty-odd years later, the boy, who still remembers nothing of that fateful day, has become a dublin detective and a new murder case develops in the same woods where his childhood friends were lost. are the cases connected? can the detective slip back to his suppressed past, keep his sanity, and possibly solve two cases? almost.

*spoiler alert*

the current-day murder case is well-developed and is satisfyingly solved at the close of the novel; i can't say the same for the cold case, unfortunately. i found the ending to be extremely anti-climatic and was rather disappointed that so many leads had been introduced only for them to all fizzle out. i know it is probably intended to be a psychologically suspenseful open ending, never knowing what really happened, but, darn it, i like a closed case at the end of a mystery novel.

after discussing the book with a fellow librarian, who really enjoyed it (so what do i know?), i decided to give french's dublin another try, this time with faithful place.

faithful place recounts the story of a teenage runaway-turned-dublin cop whose first love has just turned up dead at a familiar haunt in the narrator's old neighborhood, faithful place. the catch? rosie daly has been dead for twenty-two years, the same amount of time frank has been away. rosie and frank had planned on meeting one night to run away to england and elope. rosie doesn't show, frank assumes she went to england without him, and he never returns home. so what happened to rosie if she never made it to england?

the story unfolds quietly and slowly as frank is forced to reconnect with the estranged family he had hoped to never see again. although rosie's murder is solved at the close of the novel, i found the ending, once again, to be a bit of a let-down. i fear i've read too many sherlock holmes stories and my desire for hard-hitting facts and my love for the intellectual process of deduction has clouded my appreciation for the exploration of human relationships in detective fiction.

what have you read lately? anything good?