TEN-SECOND STAIRCASE

Arthur Bryant and John May are a pair of superannuated London investigators who work in something called the Peculiar Crimes Unit. To describe them as eccentric is putting it mildly, so they make a feast for an expert character actor like Tim Goodman. They harrumph, they pontificate, they mix up their pills, and drop their cell phones in the soup as they defy the Metropolitan Police who want to shut them down and race time to solve a series of extremely "peculiar" murders—murders that, in fact, can't have happened, at least not the way witnesses describe them. A horseman dressed as The Highwayman galloped through an art gallery? A man struck by lightning indoors? All wildly improbable, but terrific fun. B.G. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine [Published: MARCH 2009]