The Casebook of Bryant and May – Christopher Fowler & Keith Page graphic novel
I’m a huge fan of Christopher Fowler’s Bryant and May detective novels, and not that much of a reader of graphic novels (the name given to comics for grown-ups, as I always think of it) save for Grandville. Add to that how distinctive my images of Fowler’s regular characters have become thanks to Tim Goodman’s wonderful audio recordings and I wasn’t quite sure how I would take to someone else choosing how they look and drawing their likenesses.
It turns out that Keith Page has done a wonderful job – his pictures enrich and compliment the images already conjured up in my mind by Christopher Fowler’s words and Tim Goodman’s voices (and the author is rather happy too judging by what he has written on his website). The plot of the main story, and also that of the mini-second story in the book, show Fowler’s usual standards – bizarre, eccentric and yet sufficiently logical for the reader never to feel cheated when the twists are untangled and the mysteries explained.
The one blemish is the unfortunate number of errors in the book, with quite a few small typos, one scene where a wall disappears between two panels and one block of text wrongly printed twice. That is a shame as, for me at least, the quality of the production is part of the charm of graphic novels. Even so, a great read and very enjoyable.
If you like this, you might also be interested in Bryant & May and The Bleeding Heart by Christopher Fowler.
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Buy The Casebook of Bryant and May by Christopher Fowler & Keith Page here.
Hi Mark – The publisher has publicly apologised for the paragraph of transposed type – luckily it wasn't in the actual stories or I'd have been more upset. It will be put right. PS more than justified my choice of going with them because the reproduction is better than anything else in the UK right now. I'm hoping they'll let us do another, even bigger volume of all-new stuff.
That's great to hear – thanks.