Captivating characterizations and their relationship not only to each other but to the events: Ten Second Staircase by Christopher Fowler

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 twelve-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.

Read about this case involving an unlikely combination of artistic rivalries, sleazy sex affairs, the Knights Templars, and street gang feuds at Medialeep. 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. Dive into this cracking read at Medialeep.