Bryant & May: Hall of Mirrors is Christopher Fowler’s 15th Peculiar Crimes Unit Mystery and finds Bryant with his literary agent reminiscing about a critical case from the detectives’ early years. (He’s at work on a forthcoming memoir.) The tale is a recounting of an investigation from 1969, back when the PCU was in its infancy and under constant threat of being disbanded. Fresh off of mistakenly sinking a barge while trying to apprehend a hit man (while dressed up as a yellow submarine in London’s Canal Carnival, no less), Bryant and May are given the “harmless” task of babysitting a witness for the prosecution.

Their ward, businessman Monty Hatton-Jones, takes the two detectives to a weekend party at the deteriorating Tavistock Hall in Kent, where Bryan and May maneuver playfully through the eccentricities of the times: demented color schemes, miniskirts, rock and roll, an unbridled optimism for the future, and, of course, murder. Unfortunately for Bryant’s expectant agent, the death doesn’t occur until midway through the tale.

While waiting for the murder to happen sounds as if it may be tedious, it was anything but. Bryant & May: Hall of Mirrors is a traditional whodunit with a sense of humor, both in Bryant and May’s banter and with its parody, in a kindhearted manner, of the English country house murder mystery. The plot’s climactic reveal is dependent on coincidence, but the type of coincidence that induces a smile rather than a head shake, making for a peculiarly enjoyable read.