Christopher Fowler

It’s the late 1970s and 20-something Christopher Fowler is a film freak, obsessively watching lousy films in run-down fleapit cinemas. He longs to be a famous screenwriter and put his dreams on the big screen. And so he heads for Wardour Street, Britain’s equivalent of Hollywood.

An enthralling anthology of 20 CWA Dagger Award-shortlisted gripping and thrilling stories for the most hardened crime fan.

This is the memoir Christopher Fowler always wanted to write about 'writing'. It's the story of how a young bookworm growing up in a house where there was nothing to read but knitting pamphlets and motorcycle manuals became a writer—a 'word monkey'—and pursued a sort of career in popular fiction.

As the nation's oldest serving detectives, we know more about London than almost anyone. After all, we've been walking its streets and impulsively arresting its citizens for decades. Who better to take you through its less savory side?

Christopher Fowler's memoir captures life in suburban London as it has rarely been seen: through the eyes of a lonely boy who spends his days between the library and the cinema....

Absence doesn't make the heart grow fonder. It makes people think you're dead. So begins Christopher Fowler's foray into the back catalogues and backstories of 99 authors....

Ninety-one-year-old Alice Hoffman died alone in her top floor flat. Social services say she slipped through the cracks in a failing system. But detectives Arthur Bryant and John May of the Peculiar Crimes Unit have their suspicions. Mrs. Hoffman was not as innocent as she appeared....

At a beautiful villa in the south of France, Hannah Carreras works as a maid. Under strict instructions never to speak to the guests, she blends into the background – but she sees everything. Including the mistress Summer, lounging by the pool awaiting the arrival of her married lover, Steve.

The death of a child and what seems to be a murderous puppet make a perfect case for Bryant and May and the Peculiar Crimes Unit....

Long regarded as an anachronism, the Peculiar Crimes Unit is to be disbanded....

A banking scandal has filled the city with violent protests, and a young homeless man burns to death after being caught between rioters and the police....

The members of London's Peculiar Crimes Unit are on the case again when a dog walker is found dead. The method of the death is odd...the killer had no way in - or out....

Arthur Bryant, John May and the Peculiar Crimes Unit is on the trail of an enigma: Mr Fox....

One night, Arthur Bryant witnesses a drunken lady coming out of a pub. The next morning, she is found dead at the exact spot where their paths crossed. Disturbingly, the pub has vanished....

The Peculiar Crimes Unit has solved many extraordinary cases over the years, but some were hushed up and hidden away. Until now. Arthur Bryant remembers these lost cases as if they were yesterday....

The Thames is London's most important yet neglected artery. When a young woman is found chained to a post in the tide, no one can understand how she came to be drowned there....

Two small children - playing a game called 'Witch-Hunter' - place a curse on a young woman eating lunch in a church courtyard....

The odd couple of detection return in a tense, atmospheric new thriller that keeps you guessing right to the end....

Two teenagers see a dead man rising from his grave. And if that's not alarming enough, one of them is killed in a hit and run accident....

1969. Detectives Arthur Bryant and John May are among 10 guests about to enjoy a weekend at Tavistock Hall, with the detectives undercover, in disguise and tasked with protecting Monty Hatton-Jones....