Seventy-Seven Clocks

Sep 21, 2024 7:37 AM

Author:Christopher Fowler

'The newspapers referred to it as the case of the seventy-seven clocks. There was quite a fuss at the time. We got into terrible trouble. Dear fellow, it was one of our most truly peculiar cases. I remember as if it was yesterday.' In fact, Arthur Bryant remembers very little about yesterday, but he does remember the oddest investigation of his career...

It was late in 1973. As strikes and blackouts ravaged the country during Edward Heath's 'Winter of Discontent', sundry members of a wealthy, aristocratic family were being disposed of in a variety of grotesque ways - by reptile, by bomb, by haircut. As the hours of daylight diminish towards Christmas, Bryant & May, the irascible detectives of London's controversial Peculiar Crimes Unit, know that time is the key - and time is running out for both the family and the police. Their investigations lead them into a hidden world of class conflict, craftsmanship and the secret loyalties of big business. But what have seventy seven ticking clocks to do with it?

Now the full story can at last be revealed, in this most eerie of adventures that features Arthur Bryant at his rudest, John May at his most exasperated and a gallery of colourful, bizarre characters who could only make their home in a city like London...

Reviews

Witty, sinuous and darkly comedic storytelling from a Machiavellian jokester

—— Maxim Jacubowski , GUARDIAN

Witty, charming, and informed about London, but - this is important - the storylines are vivid, tough and have a hard edge

—— Marcel Berlins , THE TIMES

Entertaining and intriguing. A canny exercise in black humour and suspense

—— Time Out

Highly entertaining

—— Good Book Guide

'Witty and melancholy by turns, if the plot of this eccentric tale of greed and witchcraft doesn't have your mouth watering, the loving descriptions of French food will

—— Daily Telegraph

Un-put-down-able, especially for holiday reading in that mysterious rented villa in Provence

—— Jane Jakeman reviewing The Murdered House , Independent

'An exciting page-turner...unusual and intriguing'

—— WESTERN DAILY PRESS

'It is not unusual for the Western detective story to be transported into Far Eastern surroundings. But it is the rare novel that offers a seductive and engaging local protagonist of such a story, penned by an Easterner. This does both with resounding success, as well as adding a dimension not typically found in the genre'

—— San Francisco Chronicle

'Impeccably researched, this is sometimes poetic, often exotic and totally hardcore'

—— Daily Mirror

'Wow! Partly 'normal' thriller and partly off-the-beaten-track Buddhist narrative ... An original and gripping novel'

—— Publishing News

'John Burdett is purely and simply a wonderful writer, a genuine grown-up at work in a genre mostly populated by arrested adolescents...Bangkok 8 is a tour de force'

—— Washington Post

'To say that Bangkok 8 in set in Bangkok is an understatement: it is suffused with the cooking smells, mired in the traffic jams and entangled in the bare limbs of the sex workers... not that the novel is slow going. Bangkok 8 goes from 0 to 60 in about 10 pages'

—— Time

'Like a modern-day Indiana Jones adventure written by Evelyn Waugh...One of this season's cleverest and most stylish entertainments'

—— Wall Street Journal

'Engaging, warm, humorous and poignant at the same time'

—— The Scotsman

'This book is amazing . . . A must read'

—— Martina Evans , Irish Post

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