Product Description

Fiction's most enigmatic detectives since Holmes & Watson return in their fourth outrageously entertaining adventure...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11885 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

From the Inside Flap
It is a crime tailor-made for the Met’s Peculiar Crimes Unit: a controversial contemporary artist murdered and displayed as part of her own outrageous installation. No suspects, no motive, no evidence – which means business as usual for the PCU’s decrepit and cantankerous detectives, Arthur Bryant and John May. But this time they have a witness – a twelve-year-old boy who swears the killer was a masked highwayman riding a black horse . . .

In the face of others’ disbelief, Bryant and May take the sighting seriously – and then ‘the Highwayman’ is spotted again, at the scene of his next outlandish murder. Whatever the killer’s real identity, he seems intent on ridding London of various minor celebrities while becoming one himself. As the tabloids begin to create ‘Highwayman Fever’, Bryant and May, together with the newest member of the team – May’s agoraphobic granddaughter, April – find themselves baffled by a case that seems to involve everything from vicious artistic rivalries and sleazy sex to feuding street gangs and the Knights Templar. To crack it, they need to use every orthodox – and unorthodox – means at their disposal, including myth, witchcraft and the psycho-geographic history of London’s ‘monsters’ past and present.

And if one unsolvable crime were not enough, it begins to look as though this case has disturbing links to a decades-old killing spree that nearly destroyed the partnership of Bryant and May once before . . . and might again.

From the Back Cover
It was a murder tailor-made for the Peculiar Crimes Unit.

A controversial artist is found dead, displayed as part of her own outrageous installation. No suspects, no motive, no evidence. Only a witness who swears the killer was a masked highwayman on a black horse…

In the face of others’ disbelief, it’s very much business as usual for the octogenarian detectives Arthur Bryant and John May. Then the perpetrator is spotted at the scene of his next outlandish murder. It seems he’s intent on ridding London of certain minor celebrities while becoming one himself as the tabloids begin stirring up ‘Highwayman Fever’.

Baffled by a case that involves everything from bitter artistic rivalries and sleazy sex to gang warfare and the Knights Templar, Bryant and May know that, to crack it, they must use every orthodox – and unorthodox – means at their disposal. Not least because it looks as though these deaths are connected to a decades-old killing spree that nearly destroyed the two partners once before…and might yet again.

The Bryant & May mysteries:

‘Witty, sinuous and darkly comedic storytelling from a Machiavellian jokester’ Guardian

‘Marvellous…these are really, really great reads, absolutely full of London detail’ BBC Radio 4’s ‘Front Row’

‘The scariest outing yet…Fowler leads his readers in one direction while preparing an out-of-the-blue whammy denouement’ Scotsman

‘‘Very cleverly plotted…simultaneously scary and alluring’ Daily Telegraph

About the Author
Christopher Fowler is the acclaimed author of fifteen novels, including the Bryant & May mysteries Full Dark House – winner of the 2004 BFS August Derleth Award for Best Novel, The Water Room – nominated for the CWA People’s Choice Dagger Award, Seventy-Seven Clocks and the new novel White Corridor. He lives in King’s Cross, London. Visit

Customer Reviews

Crime Fighters Without Match
Christopher Fowler's Bryant and May novels are something to be savoured. They consist of a fascinating mix of history, sociology and mysticism, with a huge dollop of tongue in cheek humour thrown in. After a slightly disappointing third instalment, number four in the sequence 'The Ten Second Staircase' is a return to form.

The crux of the plot deals with society's deification of celebrity and the way in which the public turns on them once they display human frailties. Fowler is clearly a left-wing thinker, which will put some people off reading his novels, but the author is clearly concerned about British society's breakdown and tables some compelling reasons for what he thinks is wrong.

This philosophising provides food for thought but is never allowed to slow the pace of this exciting thriller. Bryant and May investigate a series of baffling, seemingly perfect murders and with external pressures threatening the unit, now more than ever, they need to come up with goods. The denouement is slightly implausible but such is quality of Fowler's groundwork this doesn't really matter. Like all his previous novels, 'The Ten Second Staircase' is full of London's historic esoterica which makes it a pleasure to read.

If you haven't read any Bryant and May's yet, don't start here; begin with 'A Full Dark House' and if you're not completely sold, move onto 'The Water Room' which, in my opinion, is one of the best crime novels ever written. Fowler has stated from the outset that he only intends writing six Bryant and May novels, which makes them a rare vintage and, as I said at the beginning of this review, something to savour.

Utter rubbish, Save your money
I'm afraid I have to disagree with the three rave reviews posted here. This book is abysmal -- badly plotted, poor grammar, shoddy characterisation, "explanations" that defy belief wedged in whenever the author knows he's departed too far from any connection with Planet Earth. There's a tiresome underlying assumption (which should have died long before the end of Tony Blair's first term of office) that left wing is good and right wing is bad, and a ludicrous reliance on the strange idea that children at an expensive private school must necessarily be seized of anomie and weltschmerz causing them to court immortality through a series of pointless murders. What is most inexcusable in a book of this sort is that the solution is screaming at the reader for the last 100 pages and I defy anyone over the age of six not to have worked it out long before the last tedious paragraph has expired limply on the page. The Acting Head of the Peculiar Crimes Unit is pressing for the employment of Bryant and May to be wound up. I can only cry "Amen -- and as soon as possible".

More mysteries illuminated...
Once again the wonderful Bryant & May continue to light up the page with a modern day twist on the Highwayman as folk hero leading to possibly the series' best denouement so far.

Add this to plot strands and sub-plots involving ancient religious orders, agoraphobic family members, feuding street gangs and the resolution of a case first mentioned in Roofworld and you'll find this very hard to put down.