Foxglove Summer

Foxglove Summer (2014) Ben Aaronovitch

When dealing with the law, having a mysterious past is contraindicated.

I love this series so much.

We return again to Peter Grant, police constable and apprentice wizard.

He is still trying to deal with the results of the last case he worked–the one where his co-apprentice and friend Lesley scarpered off with the faceless man. So a missing children case in the country seems like a pleasant distraction in comparison to his thoughts.

But Peter is still a smart-ass.

If I’d been about four ranks higher up the hierarchy I’d have regarded it as an opportunity to realize additional intelligence assets through enhanced stakeholder engagement. But I’m just a constable so I didn’t.

“So the moon effects magic, why?”

“I’m working on several theories,” I said . “But I’m currently favoring the hypothesis that the moon has a seemingly arbitrary effect on magic because it likes to piss me off.”

“That’s a theory with a high degree of applicability to other spheres of life,” he said.

And he still makes the most marvelous observations.

We trooped off behind her into waist high bracken, down something that was not so much a path as a statistical variation in the density of the undergrowth.

And we still have Dr Walid.

I asked what the weapon had been like. “At least sixty centimeters long, circular cross section and tapering to a sharp point,” said Dr. Walid. “Possibly a spiral configuration.”
…
“So you think it’s a (redacted)?”

“I wouldn’t like to jump to conclusions,” he said. “Not without more evidence.”

“But?”

“If you achieve nothing else,” he said, “get me a tissue sample.”

That just cracks me up.

I found the dedication lovely:

This book is dedicated to Sir Terry Pratchett OBE, who has stood like a wossname upon the rocky shores of our imaginations— the better to guide us safely into harbor.

And that dedication only made me more the certain that this bit wasn’t accidental:

For a car that was older than my mother, it had a pretty decent stereo on which Lilly played Queen’s Greatest Hits but only, she explained, because her sister had borrowed her iPod and hadn’t given it back and Queen’s Greatest Hits was the only CD in the stereo.

I was quite gleeful upon reading that passage, and am pretty sure there were other references I missed the first time round, but never fear, I have the audio version ready to go as soon as I finish my current book.

I’m coming to think that I love Ben Aaronovitch the same way I love Robert B Parker–the dialog makes the story, and all that marvelous dialog and commentary is the icing on the cake of some lovely world building and mystery.
Rating: 9/10

Published by DAW

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