White Corridor

A member of the Peculiar Crimes Unit is killed inside a locked autopsy room populated only by cadavers, and the unit's two legendary detectives, Arthur Bryant and John May, are stranded miles away in a snowbound van on the Dartmoor countryside. With Sergeant Longbright running headquarters by phone and Bryant and May directing the investigation from a queue of stalled vehicles, Christopher Fowler weaves together an impossible murder in London and a separate killer stalking the snowbound traffic jam. The locked room mystery and the stranded vehicle thriller proceed in parallel until their unexpected convergence.

Tim Goodman brings the PCU series' eccentric wit and genuine menace into productive tension, giving Bryant the necessary combination of comic impracticality and inspired deduction. The dual-case structure suits audio particularly well, with Goodman's pacing keeping both threads equally urgent. At just under eleven hours, this fifth Bryant and May entry is one of the series' most formally inventive.