posted on 30 Jun 2024

Full Dark House by Christopher Fowler

Full Dark House (2003) is the very first novel to feature the detective duo of Arthur Bryant and John May – a series that has now run to thirteen books and remains hugely popular. This book introduces us to the central cast of characters and we discover here the quirky dynamics that will turn the pair into a an oddly misshaped version of Holmes and Watson.

This first novel also establishes Fowler’s approach to the detective novel which is always playful – however ghastly the murders that fill the pages. Arthur Bryant is brilliant and eccentric but socially inept, while John May is more conventionally chisel-jawed, dogged and handsome – the one needs the other although they may not initially recognise the fact.

I should say here that I think that this first instalment of their adventures while lively, wryly funny and intricately plotted is a little too long. It’s a fault that I think comes from the fact that the author knows that these are characters he wants to stick with and develop into a long-running series and so has to fill us in with backstory, character assessments and pointers for the future as well as giving us their first ever case together. This pushes the length of the novel close to 350 pages which is, as far as I’m concerned, more than enough for any crime novel, however idiosyncratic.

And what of the plot? A bomb-blast in modern day London destroys the offices of the London Police Department's Peculiar Crimes Unit where the now very aged John May discovers his long-time friend and colleague, Arthur Bryant has seemingly been blown to smithereens – leaving behind only the latter’s false teeth in any recognisable form. Distraught at this turn of events, May is determined to discover whether this outrage has been perpetrated by someone who is seeking to prevent Bryant from reinvestigating the very first case that the two detectives ever worked together on in 1940.

The plot then flips backwards and forwards between the modern day and that first case and the reader is brought up-to-date with how the Peculiar Crimes Unit was established and how these two characters were brought together. They soon have an extraordinary case on their hands as a series of bizarre murders take place in a West End theatre company. A dancer has her feet chopped off, an actor is crushed by a piece of scenery and a young man is slashed and tipped over the theatre’s balcony and it all seems to be done by some kind of ghoulish phantom whose comings and goings can’t be fathomed.

Meanwhile, back in the modern day, John May is struggling to reconstruct what it was that his companion had been doing when he reopened the case. And then there’s the mystery of why Arthur Bryant’s false teeth have gone missing…..

The final denouement is, I think, much less interesting and inventive than the rest of the plot but, in truth, that hardly matters because in this book character is more important than plot. You will either take to them and want to follow the series or their charm will elude you – but there’s only one way to find out.

Paperback copies are cheap and easy to find and you wont need to spend more than a few pounds.

 

Terry Potter

June 2024