Broken Homes

Masking Betrayal

Broken Homes
by Ben Aaronovitch
Gollancz
ISBN: 9780575132481

Warning: A very big spoiler in this one so, if you are going to read this book at some point, I would suggest you read it before digging into this review.

Broken Homes is the fourth novel in the ever popular Rivers Of London series by Ben Aaronovitch and it’s yet another follow on from the original novel in that the lead villain from that story, who main protagonists Inspector Peter Grant, his friend Lesley (also an inspector) and their boss Nightingale, in the very small division of the metropolitan police dealing with magic… is once again the main antagonist here, known only as the mysterious ‘faceless man’.  People who have read the first will remember that, in that novel, the final battle with said bad guy caused Lesley’s face to fall off and, despite many attempts to undo this surgically in subsequent tomes, she still remains no further to getting her ‘beyond scarred’ mess of a visage fixed in any way, forcing her to also wear a mask when out and about.

This novel deals mainly with the area around Elephant and Castle and a specific tower block called the Skygarden, where Peter and Lesley eventually end up taking a flat, undercover, to try and figure out what’s going on. As it turns out, the building itself is the key to the nefarious plot of the faceless man and the various murders all lead back to having something to do with the periphery of this building.

And once again, it’s a wonderful blend of procedural detective work offset by the world of magic with absolutely loads of pop culture references and other clever things afoot. So a nice parody of Orwell’s Animal Farm can be found early on when Peter mentions (the novels are written from his point of view), “It’s a police mantra that all members of the public are guilty of something but some members are more guilty than others.” Another clever thing is, when recounting a battle with one of the Dr. Moreau-like beast/human hybrids from the end of the second novel, he mentions having gone ‘mano-a-mano-tiger’ with him.

And, as usual, the various references to other franchises and works of fiction come thick and fast… with nods to such things as Harry Potter, Game Of Thrones, classic era Battlestar Galactica, Ghostbusters, Doctor Who (Peter refrains from correcting a reference about the Autons for fear of looking too nerdy), Something Wicked This Way Comes, Lord Of The Rings (the Skygarden block is compared to Isengard), Monty Python and even a mention of actress Zhang Ziyi. Along with, I’m sure, many others I’m not nearly nerdy enough to have picked up on. Perhaps my favourite shout out is to Philip K Dick’s Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? or, knowing Peter, the movie version called Blade Runner (reviewed here), with a lovely passage about various questions he is using to interrogate a suspect which reads “I called it the Voigt-Kampff test, even though only Dr. Walid got the joke - and he had to look it up on Wikipedia.”

Now though, I have to address the big, shocking moment from the end of the novel. Which, to be fair, I had seen coming since book one and have been waiting for it to happen but, it still took me by surprise to some degree and, funnily enough, because I’d given up on my idea of the true allegiances of one of the characters about halfway through this book because she really does help with the investigation… or so I thought. Here’s the thing… ever since the first novel (and I believe I mentioned it in my review of that one and possibly in the second book review also), I’ve assumed that Peter’s best friend Lesley will, due to her traumatic experiences in the first novel, switch sides and join with the enemy. It’s too much of a perfect character arc of betrayal to ignore in her, I thought. 

However, I’d just about given up on the idea by about three quarters of the way through this novel but then, right near the end of the book, boom, it played out just as I’d thought it would (although the nature of the betrayal was so casual and off handed that it took me by surprise). Peter has the faceless man handcuffed and in his custody when Lesley tasers him and runs off with the villain… who has presumably got it in his power to grow her face back somehow (or at least I suspect that’s what has been the promise). So at the end of the story we have a very bitter Peter Grant and the crew of The Folly, where the entirety of the magic division lives, is just Nightingale, Peter, Molly the bizarre house servant (who has a loose end set up in this story which is buried and, I suspect, which the author will come back to in another novel), a new acquisition of a Russian magic terrorist being temporarily held prisoner there and, of course, Toby the dog.

And that’s me done with Broken Homes, I think. I’ve taken advantage of Forbidden Planet’s recent restock of the series in signed editions so the next five novels in the series should be on the blog this year some time. As per usual, I can’t say enough good things about these books and they are something I’ve been heavily recommending to people.

Whispers Underground

Sub Stack

Whispers Underground
by Ben Aaronovitch
Gollancz
ISBN: 9780575097667

Whispers Underground, by Ben Aaronivitch, is the third of this writer’s Rivers Of London series and, I have to say, I really do like this set of novels (and thankfully, there are a fair few of them still to explore, since I caught up with these late in the game and, as far as I can tell, he’s still writing them). A quick summation for those who are not familiar with the series... these novels deal with the exploits of a British copper called Peter Grant with various other supporting characters and are kinda like Harry Potter for adults... if Harry Potter worked in a small, barely tolerated magical division of the British police.

The first novel (reviewed here) found Peter and his unfortunate partner Lesley, stumbling into this section of the force due to various things which happen to him and he is taken under the wing of a centuries old (the age is doubtful and not revealed as yet in the books I’ve read) teacher called Nightingale. I say that Lesley is unfortunate because, during that first adventure, her face fell off and no amount of plastic surgery, to date, has been able to fix this (at least by the third book). However, in the second novel, Moon Over Soho (reviewed here), she demonstrates a similar gift for magic as Peter by the end of that one and so is back in this one as a full fledged apprentice, staying at The Folly with Peter, Nightingale and sinister housekeeper Molly.

This one is more of the same but it also, again, has a slightly different flavour to it, starting off with the murder, on a tube train track, of the son of an American ambassador and leading to somewhere I really wasn’t expecting... but which is a great ‘take’ on the title of the novel by the time you get there. While the previous one had more of an emphasis on action than the first, this one dials some off that back again but it’s never less than entertaining. The ambassador’s son was stabbed to death with the shard of a broken pot and, because Peter is becoming sensitive to the remnants of magic, he realises that magic had been used to fashion the particular pot that is identified as the murder weapon. So things go from there as he joins the homicide squad but also separately investigates the magical stuff while the investigation is ongoing.

He’s hampered and helped in this by a wealth of new characters, some of whom I’m guessing may return in later books, like a female FBI agent who inevitably learns of the existence of magic, in no uncertain terms, while she’s tagging along and following Peter and Lesley in their investigations. And there are some really nice sequences to this, set underground in both the tube system in London and the sewer system... and even deeper than that when Peter is left for dead in a collapsed tunnel made by an ‘earthbender’ who can burrow through solid ground at speed.

The time is a lot more compressed than I thought it would be in relation to the previous stories. It’s clear that while this is the third novel, the events of the first book only took place about a year before. The book is structured over the space of one week on the approach to Christmas day, with section headings taking on the name of the day and chapter headings created from the areas of London in which Peter finds himself at any given time (the book is told completely from first person narrative stance by the main protagonist). Also, although the main plot is nothing to do with the previous novel, which left things dangling in the air in terms of the villain of the piece for that one, there are certainly lingering encounters at two points with that particular menace... the writer dangling these scenes because he obviously doesn’t want the reader to forget that villain, who is obviously going to be a kind of ‘arch nemesis’ for Peter, Lesley and Nightingale at some future date.

And, as the others in the series, there’s a fair few bits of pop culture reference thrown into the mix. For example, the elvish language as created by J. R. R. Tolkien turns up on one of the pots... and being as it’s not the ‘real elvish’ language of the world of these books, it’s only Peter who recognises it enough to get it translated. There’s also a nice reference to the British horror movie Death Line, which is also set in the London Underground system and which I still, amazingly, haven’t got around to watching. And I was also pleased, bearing in mind when this book was written (before the Chibnal era) that Peter and his family all gather and watch the Doctor Who Christmas Special each year.

And I think I’ve revealed as much of Whispers Underground as I want to other than to say that, in the last chapter, there's a nice hook when one of Peter’s new ‘colleagues’ tells him about a ‘talking fox’ she has been communicating with. So I’m guessing that’s a nice little set up for something coming in a later novel, for sure. I absolutely loved Whispers Underground and will definitely continue on to the next one at some point soon... hopefully this year if time permits.

Rivers Of London

Swazzle Stick

Rivers Of London
by Ben Aaronovitch
Gollancz
ISBN: 9780575097582

One of the few joys of getting old is finding another writer whose work you really enjoy. The extra icing on that particular cake is when it’s the first book in what turns out to be a substantial series of novels already published. I think I’ve had a few recommendations from people to start up with the Rivers Of London series over the years, the last time from someone three years ago with whom I was doing jury service but, since the people who make these recommendations don’t know me that well, I’ve always put buying one of these books on the back burner, so to speak.

So I’m very pleased that I finally lifted the lid and read the first novel in the series and, a fine tome it turned out to be. Not quite what I was expecting either, to tell you the truth. Set in modern London (mostly... I’ll talk about that in a little while) the books follows the first big adventure of graduate policeman Peter Grant and his colleague/friend/crush Lesley May. Told in first person viewpoint by Grant, who really is the main protagonist here, the book starts off in Covent Garden with these two young coppers guarding a crime scene late at night. The crime scene in question dealing with a man near the actor’s church in Covent Garden, who has had his head knocked off. When Lesley goes to get coffee for them both in the small hours of the morning, Peter finds himself face to face with a witness to the crime. The only problem with that is... the witness is a very old ghost.

The book goes on from there as Peter and Lesley discover a previously unknown (to them) one man branch of the police dealing with ‘magic and occult’ phenomena. A man known as Nightingale. Peter becomes his apprentice, learning how to cast spells and detect supernatural phenomena... since Nightingale is also a very old wizard. Along the way, Peter and Lesley find themselves entrenched in a very dangerous investigation, negotiating the practicalities and bureaucracy of dealing with the existence of Gods, monsters and other creatures that go more than just bump in the night. Generally putting themselves in very dangerous situations where, if you’re not careful in the case of the main antagonist of this particular case... your face might fall off.

And it’s great, shot through with a very strong dose of humour right from the outset. The main characters are all very likeable and the situations they find themselves in inhabit a world which could easily be cliché ridden but, in actuality, are told with a certain freshness and sparkle that you don’t always find in more poe faced works dealing with this kind genre, or indeed ‘genre mix’, as it marries strong fantasy elements (including the rivers and their rulers fighting over territories... such as rivals Father Thames and Mama Thames) with modern police procedural methods and references. It’s by no means downgrading the police but I do like the fact that it’s par for the course in this novel for certain officers to falsify evidence and witness reports, lying at the request of their senior officers which, when Peter has to do that, gets him the compliment of “You do have the makings of a proper copper.”

Also, when the writer/narrative voice starts to make jokes about the Midichlorians from the Star Wars prequels and paraphrases a line from Blade Runner (things which the reader would either know or not and, Peter usually doesn’t get a laugh from these since the characters he cracks them with don’t seem to recognise what he’s talking about) then... well, Aaranovitch already had me hooked but even more so once he’s started down this road. There even another discrete reference, again not spelled out, to the 1972 British movie Death Line, at one point.

More humour is found when Peter’s attempts at learning magic have some decidedly dodgy and damaging results at times. Plus casual one liners such as when he’s told a suspect is hiding in Walthamstow and his first thought is “Many would say that was punishment enough.”, had me in stitches... or as close as I get to stitches on my generally unsmiling features.

The approach to magic is something I quite enjoyed too. Peter is picked on because Nightingale sees something special in him, particularly considering he managed to see... and interview for a witness statement... a ghost, when he didn’t even believe in them until then. And the way Peter approaches the many magical realms opened up to him is to relate it all to science and he experiments with it the same way a scientist might test various hypothesis... very much in laboratory conditions.

The other big thing I enjoyed was the many shout outs to parts of London that I know well. Most of the locales Aaranovitch writes about are known to me and I find it ironic, since I don’t go into London as much as I used to. That’s also going to age the books for future readers too, I’m afraid. This book was first published in 2011 and, already in 11 years, many of the shops and haunts he writes about have changed or disappeared. I remember them but, I suspect that as Peter carries on in future books, he will note the changes to certain places in the text... at which point it will probably be a London I recognise less with each passing book unless I start going down there more regularly and actively revisiting these areas for myself.

And the story develops in a way which I didn’t see coming until it was revealed either (which is a hard thing to do to me, to be honest, I usually see stuff coming a mile off). There was one point in the story where a particularly horrible and terminal crime is committed against a babe in arms which, honestly, should have given me a big clue as to where this was all going... I just wasn’t expecting it and I missed it completely. And I’m really not complaining... that’s a good thing as far as I’m concerned. Surprise me with the writing and I’m going to stay interested, for sure.

And that’s all I’ve got to say about Rivers Of London other than, as a sign of respect to the hundreds of books on my to read pile, the second volume in the series, Moon Over Soho, will definitely be going on my Christmas list and I’m planning on reading all the other books in the series during 2023 too, if I can afford books on top of all these new energy bills... I might be piling them all up and burning them to get some heat going instead, if I’m not careful. But, if you like stuff like the Night Watch books and are happy if I describe these novels a being a kind of Harry Potter for grown ups... then you should probably like this one, for sure.