A largely comic escapade whose tone evokes both the biting wit of Evelyn Waugh and the slapstickier shenanigans of P.G. Wodehouse. Bryant himself deems this country-house mystery 'rather like an Agatha Christie novel.'
Fowler always manages to keep things fresh, and Hall of Mirrors is no exception ... well written and original as ever ... London is normally like an additional character in the Bryant and May novels. However, the unique, macabre and peculiar aspects of the city and its people, which Fowler writes about so well, are missing here and the story suffers a little for it.
[A] narrative veering between laugh-out-loud funny to macabre (a body in a macerator, murder by knitting needle). This fifteenth Bryant and May outing concludes with an updating on the lives of all the characters. Could this signal an end to the long-running, eccentric, and consistently entertaining series? Let’s hope not.
Fowler is in no particular hurry to set the story pieces up on the board, and spends a good part of the novel’s first half doing just that while keeping readers wondrously entertained, as he reveals the first historical hints of the personality traits of his primary characters. The mayhem kicks in soon enough, as the numbers of those assembled... begin to alarmingly decrease ... Longtime fans of the series will rejoice once again... Hall of Mirrors serves as an excellent introduction to what you’ve been missing for the last 15 years or so but can now enjoy to the fullest.
The inspired idea of revisiting the youth of his aged sleuths in swinging England is matched by Fowler’s customary gusto in sweating the details. More fully fleshed-out suspects, clues, red herrings, twists, and honest mystery and detection than in the last three whodunits you read.
