Christopher Fowler was an English novelist and short-story writer best known for the Bryant & May mystery series.
Christopher Fowler
Spanky
1994. Warner Books.
The park was closed. Spanky slipped his hand through the wrought-iron bars and gently lifted away the lock, swinging the gate open wide. We walked into a gravelled avenue of rain-heavy plane trees, dimly lit by the street lamps outside. I noticed that my new acquaintance threw no shadow...We had reached the fountain at the centre of the park. The June night was cool and pleasant, with the tang of rain still in the trees, but I was growing increasingly uneasy. There was an ozone-scented voltage in the air. The wind felt strange on my skin. The park was empty and full of noise. I think I began to feel once more that I was in the company of a madman
Martyn's companion claims to be a daemon - 'the link between God and man' - and can transform his life: 'fill your mind with the sentience of harmonic world order and your body with the mobius-chords of hedonistic fulfilment.' But like all Faustian pacts the full import only becomes clear later.
Finally, we had reached a recognizable landmark. The gates of Regent's Park, where Spanky had first shown me his illusions...By now the hours had crawled nightmarishly to lunchtime, and a few hardy office workers had braved the inclement weather to sit in shelters unwrapping sandwiches and opening bags of crisps. I had decided that if Spanky didn't kill me within the next few hours, pneumonia would..."You're thinking aloud," he said, turning aside and looking off along the misted green avenue of trees...As I followed his gaze, a figure emerged through the drizzle, walking uncertainly towards me
Disturbia
1997. Warner Books, 1998.
The cab...reached the park and entered the first of the gates into the Outer Circle. Here the government departments were hidden behind trompe l'oeil mock-Grecian temples, painted a glaring white and set back from the road. Bedecked with posturing statues, they reminded Vince of over-iced wedding cakes, the apotheosis of good taste to some, the ultimate in kitsch to others. Smearing a path through the steamed-over window with the back of his hand, he could make out the parade of security cameras mounted on grey steel poles. The curving park road bristled with them
In an ominous future London Vince and his friends are pitted against the League of Prometheus in a deadly game involving a series of challenges contained in envelopes. The clues this time point to the Lubetkin penguin pool, one of the few surviving features of an almost-bankrupt Zoo where 'a carnival-yellow bouncy castle and fast food kiosks lined the once-grand central square.'
The white oval of the sunken pool, dazzling even in rain and darkness, was in sight...Vince ran up to the edge and peered in. A handful of bedraggled penguins stood around the lip of the cobalt pool, sheltering from the downpour. Across the centre, two sweeping white ramps curled around each other in an elegant descent to water level. On the top one stood a figure dressed in black and white motorcycle leathers, holding a pale envelope