Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 10

Your Cut-Out-N-Keep Bryant & May Plot Guide Part 3

(I’m publishing these each day now because we have lots of other subjects to discuss, so there’s one more to come tomorrow) The Casebook Of Bryant & May (Graphic Novel) Two illustrated, untold and very silly cases for Bryant & May, ‘The Soho Devil’, saw them coming face-to-face with a clown cult and a runaway rhino, […]

Your Cut-Out-N-Keep Bryant & May Plot Guide Part 2

When I look back at these plots, I’m surprised more at what I didn’t do with the series as much as what I did do. I didn’t marry any of the leading characters off, I didn’t write plots about drugs, pedophilia or trafficking and I didn’t use loads of Anglo-Saxon swears. Not for any prudish […]

Your Cut-Out-N-Keep Bryant & May Plot Guide Part 1

Following on from recent discussions of plots, it occurred to me that I hadn’t ever bothered to publish my own guide to the 21 plots of the Bryant & May books (they’re probably lurking on another part of the site covered in cobwebs), so here in four parts follows your guide to what’s what between […]

Writer’s Block? Let’s Call It Something Else.

I’ve no doubt that writers’ block is real but the name covers a host of symptoms. As someone who has been linguistically incontinent since age six I was never able to understand how some writers could complain of bunged-up word pipes. It seems such a vague condition. Block just means you’re unable to write for […]

Too Much Death On The Nile

I have only my geekiness to blame. I should never have compared the three versions of Agatha Christie’s ‘Death on the Nile’. The novel was vintage Christie, combining the whodunnit with the author’s love of Egyptian antiquities to good effect. It’s also a key example of Christie misdirection, a classically constructed prestige concealed by shifting […]

Why Do My Detectives Live In London?

A reader recently asked me why the Bryant & May novels are ‘so London-centric’. The short answer is that the characters were born there, and so was I. On average people live 37 miles from where they were born, with one in four people owning their final property within a five mile radius of their […]

A Marvellous Cure For Stress

Seeing others having a worse time than yourself is strangely calming. Sometimes the public is right. In Alwyn Turner’s ‘All In It Together’, his study of England in the 21st century, a pattern becomes discernible. Turner has been obsessively chronicling decades of political and social rule and misrule for years, and has now reached events […]

Permacrisis? What Permacrisis?

Where is all this new money coming from? For a while London has returned to normal, so long as vaccination can be provided in a continuous rollout cycle. We’re free to choose whether we want to mask and distance. My neighbourhood remains wary thanks to its large population of Chinese and Japanese students, for whom […]

Bryant & May Are Stepping Out Into The City

When it came to positioning the next Bryant & May book, I and the Transworld team faced a dilemma; ‘Bryant & May’s Peculiar London’ is neither a novel nor a collection of short stories, but it has all of the characters you’d expect in a B&M adventure. Nor was it a guide book. Its contents […]

The Hollywood Horror Show Reaches A Timely End

The 2022 Academy Awards mark the close of an era – not because of slappable Will Smith’s career imploding but for an entirely different reason. It’s the first time a streaming service has won Best Picture, erasing the line between TV and film for good. The passable ‘Coda’ ticked the indie/disability boxes this year while […]