bryant & may: hall of mirrors: a peculiar crimes unit mystery  <b>london, 1969. with the swinging sixties under way, detectives arthur bryant and john may find themselves caught in the middle of a good, old-fashioned manor house murder mystery.</b><br /><br /> hard to believe, but even positively ancient sleuths like bryant and may of the peculiar crimes unit were young once . . . or at least younger. flashback to london 1969: mods and dolly birds, sunburst minidresses—but how long would the party last?<br /><br /> after accidentally sinking a barge painted like the yellow submarine, bryant and may are relegated to babysitting one monty hatton-jones, the star prosecution witness in the trial of a disreputable developer whose prefabs are prone to collapse. the job for the demoted detectives? keep the whistle-blower safe for one weekend.<br /><br /> the task proves unexpectedly challenging when their unruly charge insists on attending a party at the vast estate tavistock hall. with falling stone gryphons, secret passageways, rumors of a mythical beast, and an all-too-real dismembered corpse, the bedeviled policemen soon find themselves with “a proper country house murder” on their hands.<br /><br /> trapped for the weekend, bryant and may must sort the victims from the suspects, including a hippie heir, a blond nightclub singer, and monty himself—and <i>nobody</i> is quite who he or she seems to be.<br /><br /><b>praise for</b> <i><b>bryant & may: hall of mirrors</b></i><br /><br />“arthur bryant has written his memoirs—and a jolly good yarn they make, too. . . . as always in this series, this one’s a lark.”<b>—<i>the new york times book review</i></b><br /><br /> “[<i>hall of mirrors</i> is] a largely comic escapade whose tone evokes both the biting wit of evelyn waugh and the slapsticker shenanigans of p.g. woodhouse.”<b>—<i>the wall street journal</i></b><br /><br /> “more fully fleshed-out suspects, clues, red herrings, twists, and honest mystery and detection than in the last three whodunits you read.”<b>—<i>kirkus reviews</i></b><br /><br /> “the narrative [veers] between laugh-out-loud funny to macabre. . . . eccentric and consistently entertaining.”<b>—<i>booklist</i></b><br /><br /> “fowler evokes the period as neatly as he crafts the plot.”<b>—<i>publishers weekly</i></b><br /><br /> “wonderful.”<b>—<i>deadly pleasures</i></b><br /><br /> “so agatha christie (intentionally). and as in a christie, nothing is quite what it seems as one murder follows another. love the butler.”<b>—<i>poisoned pen</i> <i>newsletter</i></b>