Lies Sleeping, Audio Book

Lies Sleeping, Audio Book (2018) Ben Aaronovitch narrated by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith (Rivers of London)

The nanny landed like a cat on the pavement in what I thought was clear defiance of the laws of physics. I don’t care how supple you are, landing like that from three stories up should have driven her shin bones through her knees.

We were in Bev’s outsized kitchen cooking pasta and random things we’d found in the fridge. I was frying onions and garlic in the bottom of a saucepan while Bev defrosted the mince by dragging it out of the freezer and glaring at it until it melted.

The customer-facing part of any modern business is purposely designed to be as politely unhelpful as possible. If you go in from the rear, the customer-facing staff are all facing the wrong way and everybody starts their conversation on the back foot.

Apart from us, of course.

The big gates round the back on Plumbers Row were open for a delivery, so we walked in bold as brass until someone shouted at us. We showed them our warrant cards, but they weren’t impressed—they weren’t going to talk to us until we were wearing hard hats and had signed in.

Lesley’s lips twisted.

“You think this is a game, Peter,” she said. “You find out there’s a whole world full of weird shit, and you want to make a form for it. A form? Like you can control gods by ticking off boxes. Like you can make a procedure for dealing with monsters. You’re so blind.”

“We seem to be sitting around waiting for the next fucking disaster,” he said, which went into the official log as—DCI Seawoll felt that our operational posture was too reactive.

Publisher: Tantor Audio

Rating: 9.5/10

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