It’s a crime tailor-made for the Peculiar Crimes Unit: a
controversial artist is murdered and displayed as part of
her own outrageous installation. No suspects, no motive,
no evidence – it’s business as usual for the Unit’s
cantankerous founding partners, Arthur Bryant and John
May. But this time they have an eyewitness. According to
12-year-old Luke Tripp, the killer was a cape-clad
highwayman atop a black stallion.
As implausible as the boy’s story sounds, Bryant and May
take it seriously when “The Highwayman” is spotted again,
striking a dramatic pose at the scene of his next
outlandish murder. Whatever the killer’s real identity, he
seems intent on killing off a string of minor celebrities
while becoming one himself.
As the tabloids look to make a quick bundle on “Highwayman
Fever,” Bryant and May, along with the newest member of
the Unit, May’s agoraphobic granddaughter, April, find
themselves sorting out a case involving an unlikely
combination of artistic rivalries, sleazy sex affairs, the
Knights Templars, and street gang feuds. To do it, they’re
going to have to use every orthodox–and unorthodox–means
at their disposal, including myth, witchcraft, and the
psychogeographic history of the city’s “monsters,” past
and present.
And if one unsolvable crime weren’t enough, this case has
disturbing links to a decades-old killing spree that
nearly destroyed the partnership of Bryant and May once
before…and may again. The Peculiar Crimes Unit is one
murder away from being closed down for good – and that
murder could be their own.
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