Whispers Underground

By Ben Aaronovitch

‘This fast, engrossing novel is enjoyable, cheerful, and accessible to new readers.’ — Publishers Weekly

My name is Peter Grant, police officer, apprentice wizard and well dressed man about town. I work for ECD9, otherwise known as the Folly, and to the Murder Investigation Team as ‘oh god not them again.’ But even their governor, the arch sceptic and professional northerner DCI Seawoll, knows that sometimes, when things go bump in the night, they have to call us in.

Which was why I found myself in an underground station at five o’clock, looking at the body of James Gallagher, US citizen and Arts Student. How did he avoid the underground’s ubiquitous CCTV to reach his final destination, and why is the ceramic shard he was stabbed with so strongly magical?

As the case took me into the labyrinth of conduits, tunnels and abandoned bomb shelters that lay beneath the streets I realised that London below might just be as complicated and inhabited as London above.

And worse, James Gallagher’s father is a US senator, so the next thing I know, I’ve got Special Agent Kimberley Reynolds of the FBI “liaising” with the investigation and asking awkward questions. Such as ‘just what are you guys hiding down here’ and ‘how did you conjure that light out thin air?’

LOCUS AWARD FINALIST FOR BEST FANTASY NOVEL

Reviews for Whispers Underground
‘One of the most refreshing things about former Doctor Who writer Aaronvitch’s Rivers of London series of magical procedurals is that they are blessedly free of manufactured rivalries.... This fast, engrossing novel is enjoyable, cheerful, and accessible to new readers.’ — Publishers Weekly

‘Ben Aaronovitch writes some of the funniest prose in current fantasy. These books are extremely entertaining, mainly because narrator Peter Grant has a hilarious voice and a sly sense of humor… quirkily effective prose and dry humor, making it a pure pleasure to read.’ — Tor.com

‘The prose is witty, the plot clever and the characters incredibly likeable…’ — Time Out

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9781625676078

Ben Aaronovitch

Born and raised in London, Ben Aaronovitch worked as a scriptwriter for Doctor Who and Casualty before the inspiration for his own series of books struck him whilst working as a bookseller in Waterstones Covent Garden. Ben Aaronovitch’s unique novels are the culmination of his experience of writing about the emergency services and the supernatural.

Book preview

Sunday

1

Tufnell Park

Back in the summer I’d made the mistake of telling my mum what I did for a living. Not the police bit, which of course she already knew about, having been at my graduation from Hendon, but the stuff about me working for the branch of the Met that dealt with the supernatural. My mum translated this in her head to ‘witchfinder’, which was good because my mum, like most West Africans, considered witchfinding a more respectable profession than policeman. Struck by an unanticipated burst of maternal pride she proceeded to outline my new career path to her friends and relatives, a body I estimate to comprise at least twenty per cent of the expatriate Sierra Leonean community currently resident in the UK. This included Alfred Kamara who lived on the same estate as my mum and through him his thirteen-year-old daughter Abigail. Who decided, on the last Sunday before Christmas, that she wanted me to go look at this ghost she’d found. She got my attention by pestering my mum to the point where she gave in and rang me on my mobile.

I wasn’t best pleased because Sunday is one of the few days I don’t have morning practice on the firing range and I was planning a nice lie-in followed by football in the pub.

‘So where’s this ghost?’ I asked when Abigail opened her front door.

‘How come there’s two of you?’ asked Abigail. She was a short, skinny mixed-race girl with light skin that had gone winter sallow.

‘This is my colleague Lesley May,’ I said.

Abigail stared suspiciously at Lesley. ‘Why are you wearing a mask?’ she asked.

‘Because my face fell off,’ said Lesley.

Abigail considered this for a moment and then nodded. ‘Okay,’ she said.

‘So where is it?’ I asked.

‘It’s a he,’ said Abigail. ‘He’s up at the school.’

‘Come on then,’ I said.

‘What, now?’ she said. ‘But it’s freezing.’

‘We know,’ I said. It was one of those dull grey winter days with the sort of sinister cold wind that keeps on finding ways through the gaps in your clothes. ‘You coming or not?’

She gave me the patented stare of the belligerent thirteen-year-old but I wasn’t her mother or a teacher. I didn’t want her to do something, I wanted to go home and watch the football.

‘Suit yourself,’ I said and turned away.

‘Wait up,’ she said. ‘I’m coming.’

I turned back in time for the door to be slammed in my face.

‘She didn’t invite us in,’ said Lesley. Not being invited in is one of the boxes on the ‘suspicious behaviour’ bingo form that every copper carries around in their head along with ‘stupidly over-powerful dog’ and being too fast to supply an alibi. Fill all the boxes and you too could win an all-expenses-paid visit to your local police station.

‘It’s Sunday morning,’ I said. ‘Her dad’s probably still in bed.’

We decided to wait for Abigail downstairs in the car where we passed the time by rooting through the various stake-out supply bags that had accumulated over the year. We found a whole tube of fruit pastilles and Lesley had just made me look away so she could lift her mask to eat one when Abigail tapped on the window.

Abigail, like me, had inherited her hair from the ‘wrong’ parent but, being a boy, mine just got shaved down to fuzz while Abigail’s dad used to troop her over to a succession of hair salons, relatives and enthusiastic neighbours in an attempt to get it under control. Right from the start Abigail used to moan and fidget as her hair was relaxed or braided or thermally reconditioned but her dad was determined that his child wasn’t going to embarrass him in public. That all stopped when Abigail turned eleven and calmly announced that she had Childline on speed-dial and the next person who came near her with a hair extension, chemical straightener or, God forbid, a hot comb was going to end up explaining their actions to Social Services. Since then she wore her growing afro pulled into a puffball at the back of her head. It was too big to fit into the hood of her pink winter jacket so she wore an outsized Rasta cap that made her look like a racist stereotype from the 1970s. My mum says that Abigail’s hair is a shameful scandal but I couldn’t help noticing that her hat was keeping the drizzle off her face.

‘What happened to the Jag?’ asked Abigail when I let her in the back.

My governor had a proper Mark 2 Jaguar with a straight line 3.8 litre engine that had, because I’d parked it up in the estate on occasion, passed into local folklore. A vintage Jag like that was considered cool even by 3G kids while the bright orange Focus ST I was currently driving was just another Ford Asbo amongst many.

‘He’s been banned,’ said Lesley. ‘Until he passes the advanced driver’s course.’

‘Is that because you crashed that ambulance into the river?’ asked Abigail.

‘I didn’t crash it into the river,’ I said. I pulled the Asbo out onto Leighton Road and turned the subject back to the ghost. ‘Whereabouts in the school is it?’

‘It’s not in the school,’ she said. ‘It’s under it – where the train tracks are. And it’s a he.’

The school she was talking about was the local comprehensive, Acland Burghley, where countless generations of the Peckwater Estate had been educated, including me and Abigail. Or, as Nightingale insists it should be, Abigail and I. I say countless but actually it had been built in the late Sixties so it couldn’t have been more than four generations, tops.

Sited a third of the way up Dartmouth Park Hill, it had obviously been designed by a keen admirer of Albert Speer, particularly his later work on the monumental fortifications of the Atlantic Wall. The school, with its three towers and thick concrete walls, could have easily dominated the strategic five-way junction of Tufnell Park and prevented any flying column of Islington light infantry from advancing up the main road.

I found a parking space on Ingestre Road at the back of the school grounds and we crunched our way to the footbridge that crossed the railway tracks behind the school.

There were two sets of double tracks, the ones on the south side sunk into a cutting at least two metres lower than those to the north. This meant the old footbridge had two separate flights of slippery steps to navigate before we could look through the chain-link.

The school playground and gym had been built on a concrete platform that bridged the two sets of tracks. From the footbridge, and in keeping with the overall design scheme, they looked almost exactly like the entrance to a pair of U-boat pens.

‘Down there,’ said Abigail and pointed to the left-hand tunnel.

‘You went down on the tracks?’ asked Lesley.

‘I was careful,’ said Abigail.

Lesley wasn’t happy and neither was I. Railways are lethal. Sixty people a year step out onto the tracks and get themselves killed – the only upside being that when this happens they become the property of the British Transport Police, and not my problem.

Before doing something really stupid, such as walking out onto a railway track, your well-trained police officer is required to make a risk assessment. Proper procedure would have been to call up the BTP and have them send a safety qualified search team who might, or might not, shut the line as a further precaution to allow me and Abigail to go looking for a ghost. The downside of not calling the BTP would be that, should anything happen to Abigail, it would effectively be the end of my career and probably, because her father was an old-fashioned West African patriarch, my life as well.

Another downside of calling them would be explaining what I was looking for, and having them laugh at me. Like young men from the dawn of time I decided to choose the risk of death over certain humiliation.

Lesley said we should check the timetables at least.

‘It’s Sunday,’ said Abigail. ‘They’re doing engineering works all day.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Lesley.

‘Because I checked,’ said Abigail. ‘Why did your face fall off?’

‘Because I opened my mouth too wide,’ said Lesley.

‘How do we get down there?’ I asked quickly.

There were council estates built on the cheap railway land either side of the tracks. Behind the 1950s tower block on the north side was a patch of sodden grass, lined with bushes, and behind these a chain-link fence. A kid-sized tunnel through the bushes led to a hole in the fence and the tracks beyond.

We crouched down and followed Abigail through. Lesley sniggered as a couple of wet branches smacked me in the face. She paused to check the hole in the fence.

‘It hasn’t been cut,’ she said. ‘Looks like wear and tear – foxes maybe.’

There was a scattering of damp crisp packets and Coke cans that had washed up against the fence line – Lesley pushed them around with the toe of her shoe. ‘The junkies haven’t found this place yet,’ she said. ‘No needles.’ She looked at Abigail. ‘How did you know this was here?’

‘You can see the hole from up on the footbridge.’

Keeping as far from the tracks as we could, we made our way under the footbridge and headed for the concrete mouth of the tunnel under the school. Graffiti covered the walls up to head height. Carefully sprayed balloon letters in faded primary colours overlaid by cruder taggers using anything from spray paints to felt tip pens. Despite a couple of swastikas, I didn’t think that Admiral Dönitz would have been impressed.

It kept the drizzle off our heads, though. There was a piss smell but too acrid to be human – foxes I thought. The flat ceiling, concrete walls and the sheer width that it covered meant it felt more like an abandoned warehouse than a tunnel.

‘Where was it?’ I asked.

‘In the middle where it’s dark,’ said Abigail.

Of course, I thought.

Lesley asked Abigail what she thought she was doing coming down here in the first place.

‘I wanted to see the Hogwarts Express,’ she said.

Not the real one, Abigail was quick to point out. Because it’s a fictional train innit? So obviously it’s not going to be the real Hogwarts Express. But her friend Kara who lived in a flat that overlooked the tracks said that every once in a while she saw a steam locomotive – because that’s what you’re supposed to call them – which she thought was the train they used for the Hogwarts Express.

‘You know?’ she said. ‘In the movies.’

‘And you couldn’t watch this from the bridge?’ asked Lesley.

‘Goes past too fast,’ she said. ‘I need to count the wheels because in the movies it’s a GWR 4900 Class 5972 which is 4–6–0 configuration.’

‘I didn’t know you’re a trainspotter,’ I said.

‘I’m not,’ said Abigail and punched me in the arm. ‘That’s about collecting numbers while this was about verifying a theory.’

‘Did you see the train?’ asked Lesley.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I saw a ghost. Which is why I came looking for Peter.’

I asked where she’d seen the ghost and she showed us the chalk lines she’d drawn.

‘And you’re sure this is where it appeared?’ I asked.

‘He appeared,’ said Abigail. ‘I keep telling you it’s a he.’

‘He’s not here now,’ I said.

‘Course he isn’t,’ said Abigail. ‘If he were here all the time then someone else would have reported him by now.’

It was a good point and I made a mental note to check the reports when I got back to the Folly. I’d found a service room off the mundane library that contained filing cabinets full of papers from before World War Two. Amongst them, notebooks filled with handwritten ghost sightings – as far as I could tell ghost-spotting had been the hobby of choice amongst adolescent wizards-to-be.

‘Did you take a picture?’ asked Lesley.

‘I had my phone ready and everything for the train,’ said Abigail. ‘But by the time I thought of taking a picture he’d gone.’

‘Feel anything?’ Lesley asked me.

There’d been a chill when I’d stepped into the spot where the ghost had stood, a whiff of butane that cut through the fox urine and wet concrete, a Muttley-the-dog snigger and the hollow chest roar of a really big diesel engine.

Magic leaves an imprint on its surroundings. The technical term we use is vestigia. Stone absorbs it best and living things the least. Concrete’s almost as good as stone but even so the traces can be faint and almost indistinguishable from the artefacts of your own imagination. Learning which is which is a key skill if you want to practise magic. The chill was probably the weather and the snigger, real or imagined, originated with Abigail. The smell of propane and the diesel roar hinted at a familiar tragedy.

‘Well?’ asked Lesley. I’m better at vestigium than she is and not just because I’ve been apprenticed longer than her.

‘Something’s here,’ I said. ‘You want to make a light?’

Lesley pulled the battery out of her mobile and told Abigail to follow suit.

‘Because,’ I said when the girl hesitated, ‘the magic will destroy the chips if they’re connected up. You don’t have to if you don’t want to. It’s your phone.’

Abigail pulled out last year’s Ericsson, cracked it open with practised ease and removed the battery. I nodded at Lesley – my phone has a manual switch I’d retrofitted with the help of one of my cousins who’s been cracking mobiles since he was twelve.

Lesley held out her hand, said the magic word and conjured a golf-ball-sized globe of light that hovered above her open palm. The magic word in this case was lux and the colloquial name for the spell is a werelight – it’s the first spell you ever learn. Lesley’s werelight cast a pearly light that threw soft-edged shadows against the tunnel’s concrete walls.

‘Whoa!’ said Abigail. ‘You guys can do magic.’

‘There he is,’ said Lesley.

A young man appeared by the wall. He was white, in his late teens or early twenties with a shock of unnaturally blond hair gelled into spikes. He was dressed in cheap white trainers, jeans and a donkey jacket. He was holding a can of spray paint in his hand and was using it to carefully describe an arc on the concrete. The hiss was barely audible and there was no sign of fresh paint being laid down. When he paused to shake the can the rattling sound was muffled.

Lesley’s werelight dimmed and reddened in colour.

‘Give it some more,’ I told her.

She concentrated and her werelight flared before dimming again. The hiss grew louder and now I could see what it was he was spraying. He’d been ambitious – writing a sentence that started up near the entrance.

‘Be excellent to…’ read Abigail. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

I put my fingers to my lips and glanced at Lesley, who tilted her head to show she could keep up the magic all day if need be – not that I was going to let her. I pulled out my standard-issue police notebook and got my pen ready.

‘Excuse me,’ I said in my best policeman voice. ‘Could I have a word?’ They actually teach you how to do the voice at Hendon. The aim is to achieve a tone that cuts through whatever fog of alcohol, belligerence or randomised guilt the member of the public is floating in.

The young man ignored me. He pulled a second spray can from his jacket pocket and began shading the edges of a capital E. I tried a couple more times but he seemed intent on finishing the word EACH.

‘Oi sunshine,’ said Lesley. ‘Put that down, turn round and talk to us.’

The hissing stopped, the spray cans went back in the pockets and the young man turned. His face was pale and angular and his eyes were hidden behind a pair of smoked Ozzy Osbourne specs.

‘I’m busy,’ he said.

‘We can see that,’ I said and showed him my warrant card. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Macky,’ he said and turned back to his work. ‘I’m busy.’

‘What’re you doing?’ asked Lesley.

‘I’m making the world a better place,’ said Macky.

‘It’s a ghost,’ said Abigail incredulously.

‘You brought us here,’ I said.

‘Yeah, but when I saw him he was thinner,’ said Abigail. ‘Much thinner.’

I explained that he was feeding off the magic Lesley was generating, which led to the question I always dread.

‘So what’s magic, then?’ asked Abigail.

‘We don’t know,’ I said. ‘It’s not any form of electromagnetic radiation. That I do know.’

‘Maybe it’s brainwaves,’ said Abigail.

‘Probably not,’ I said. ‘Because that would be electrochemical and it would still have to involve some kind of physical manifestation if it was going to be projected out of your head.’ So just chalk it up to pixie dust or quantum entanglement, which was the same thing as pixie dust except with the word quantum in it.

‘Are we going to talk to this guy or not?’ asked Lesley. ‘Because otherwise I’m going to turn this off.’ Her werelight bobbed over her palm.

‘Oi Macky,’ I called. ‘A word in your shell-like.’

Macky had returned to his art – finishing up the shading on the H in EACH.

‘I’m busy,’ he said. ‘I’m making the world a better place.’

‘How are you planning to do that?’ I asked.

Macky finished the H to his satisfaction and stepped back to admire his handiwork. We’d all been careful to stay as far from the tracks as possible but either Macky was taking a risk or, most likely, he’d just forgotten. I saw Abigail mouth Oh shit as she realised what was going to happen.

‘Because,’ said Macky and then he was hit by the ghost train.

It went past us invisible and silent but for a blast of heat and the smell of diesel. Macky was swatted off the track to land in a crumple just the below the X in EXCELLENT. There was a gurgling sound and his leg twitched for a couple of seconds before he went quite still. Then he faded, and with him his graffiti.

‘Can I stop now?’ asked Lesley. The werelight remained dim – Macky was still drawing its power.

‘Just a little bit longer,’ I said.

I heard a faint rattle and looking back towards the mouth of the tunnel I saw a dim and transparent figure start spraying the outline of a balloon B.

Cyclical, I wrote in my notebook, repeating – insentient?

I told Lesley she could shut down her werelight and Macky vanished. Abigail, who had cautiously flattened herself against the wall of the tunnel, watched as me and Lesley did a quick search along the strip of ground beside the track. Halfway back towards the entrance I pulled the dusty and cracked remains of Macky’s spectacles from amongst the sand and scattered ballast. I held them in my hand and closed my eyes. When it comes to vestigia, metal and glass are both unpredictable but I caught, faintly, a couple of bars of a rock guitar solo.

I made a note of the glasses – physical confirmation of the ghost’s existence – and wondered whether to take them home. Would removing something that integral to the ghost from the location have an effect on it? And if removing it did damage or destroy the ghost, did it matter? Was a ghost a person?

I haven’t read even ten per cent of the books in the mundane library about ghosts. In fact I’ve mostly only read the textbooks that Nightingale has assigned me and stuff, like Wolfe and Polidori, that I’ve come across during an investigation. From what I have read it is clear that attitudes towards ghosts, amongst official wizards, have changed over time.

Sir Isaac Newton, founder of modern magic, seemed to regard them as an irritating distraction from the beauty of his nice clean universe. There was a mad rush during the seventeenth century to classify them in the manner of plants or animals and during the Enlightenment there was a lot of earnest discussion about free will. The Victorians divided neatly into those who regarded ghosts as souls to be saved and those who thought them a form of spiritual pollution – to be exorcised. In the 1930s, as relativity and quantum theory arrived to unsettle the leather upholstery of the Folly, the speculation got a bit excitable and the poor old spirits of the departed were seized upon as convenient test subjects for all manner of magical experiments. The consensus being that they were little more than gramophone recordings of past lives and therefore occupied the same ethical status as fruit flies in a genetics lab.

I’d asked Nightingale about this, since he’d been there, but he said he hadn’t spent a lot of time at the Folly in those days. Out and about in the Empire and beyond, he’d said. I asked him what he’d been doing.

‘I remember writing a great many reports. But to what purpose I was never entirely sure.’

I didn’t think they were ‘souls’ but until I knew what they were, I was going to err on the side of ethical conduct. I scraped out a shallow depression in the ballast just where Abigail had made her mark and buried the glasses there. I made a note of time and location for transfer to the files back at the Folly. Lesley made a note of the location of the hole in the fence but it was me that had to call in to the British Transport Police on account of her still, officially, being on medical leave.

We bought Abigail a Twix and a can of Coke and extracted a promise that she’d stay off the railway tracks, Hogwarts Express or no Hogwarts Express. I was hoping that Macky’s ghostly demise would be enough to keep her away on its own. Then we dropped her off back at the flats and headed back to Russell Square.

‘That coat was too small for her,’ said Lesley. ‘And what kind of teenage girl goes looking for steam trains?’

‘You think there’s trouble at home? Mum never mentioned anything,’ I asked.

Lesley jammed her index finger under the bottom edge of her mask and scratched. ‘This is not fucking hypoallergenic,’ she said.

‘You could take it off,’ I said. ‘We’re nearly back.’

‘I think you should register your concern with Social Services,’ said Lesley.

‘Have you logged your minutes yet?’

‘Just because she’s family,’ said Lesley, ‘doesn’t mean you’ll be doing her any favours if you ignore the problem.’

‘I’ll talk to my mum,’ I said. ‘How many minutes?’

‘Five,’ she said.

‘More like ten.’

Lesley’s only supposed to do so much magic per day. It’s one of the conditions laid down by Dr Walid when he signed off on her apprenticeship. Plus she has to keep a log on what magic she does do and once a week she has to schlep over to the UCH and stick her head in an MRI while Dr Walid checks her brain for the lesions that are the early signs of hyperthaumaturgical degradation. The price of using too much magic is a massive stroke, if you’re lucky, or a fatal brain aneurysm, if you’re not. The fact that, prior to the advent of magnetic resonance imaging, the first warning sign of overuse was dropping dead is one of the many reasons why magic has never really taken off as a hobby.

‘Five minutes,’ she said.

We compromised and called it six.

* * *

Detective Inspector Thomas Nightingale is my boss, my governor and my master – purely in the teacher-pupil sense of the term, you understand – and on Sundays we generally have an early dinner in the so-called private dining room. He’s a shade shorter than me, slim, brown hair, grey eyes, looks forty but is much, much older. While he doesn’t routinely dress for dinner he always gives me the strong impression that he only holds back out of a courtesy to me.

We were having pork in plum sauce, although for some reason Molly felt that the ideal side dish was Yorkshire pudding and cabbage sautéed with sugar. As usual Lesley chose to eat in her room – I didn’t blame her; it’s hard to eat a Yorkshire pud with dignity.

‘I’ve got a little jaunt into the countryside for you tomorrow,’ said Nightingale.

‘Oh yeah?’ I asked. ‘Where to this time?’

‘Henley-on-Thames,’ said Nightingale.

‘What’s in Henley?’ I asked.

‘A possible Little Crocodile,’ said Nightingale. ‘Professor Postmartin did a bit of digging for us and uncovered some additional members.’

‘Everybody wants to be a detective,’ I said.

Although Postmartin, as keeper of the archives and old Oxford hand himself, was uniquely suited to tracking down those students we thought might have been illegally taught magic. At least two of these had graduated to total bastard evil magician status, one active back in the 1960s and one who was alive and well and had tried to knock me off a roof back in the summer. We’d been five storeys up so I took it personally.

‘I believe Postmartin has always fancied himself as an amateur sleuth,’ said Nightingale. ‘Particularly if it’s largely a matter of gathering university gossip. He thinks he’s found one in Henley and another residing in our fair city – at the Barbican no less. I want you to drive up to Henley tomorrow and have a sniff around, see if he’s a practitioner. You know the drill. Lesley and I shall visit the other.’

I mopped up the plum sauce with the last of my Yorkshire pudding. ‘Henley’s a bit off my patch,’ I said.

‘All the more reason for you to expand your horizons,’ said Nightingale, ‘I did think you might combine it with a pastoral visit to Beverley Brook. I believe she’s currently living on that stretch of the Thames.’

On the Thames, or in it? I wondered.

‘I’d like that,’ I said.

‘I thought you might,’ said Nightingale.

* * *

For some inexplicable reason the Metropolitan Police don’t have a standard form for ghosts so I had to bodge one together on an Excel spreadsheet. In the old days every police station used to have a collator – an officer whose job it was to maintain boxes of card files full of information on local criminals, old cases, gossip and anything else that might allow the blue-uniformed champions of justice to kick down the right door. Or at least a door in the right neighbourhood. There’s actually a collator’s office preserved at Hendon College, a dusty room lined wall to wall and top to bottom with index-card boxes. Cadets are shown this room and told, in hushed terms, of the far-off days of the last century, when all the information was written down on pieces of paper. These days, provided you have the right access, you log into your AWARE terminal to access CRIS, for crime reports, Crimint+, for criminal intelligence, NCALT, for training programmes, or MERLIN, which deals with crimes against or involving children, and get your information within seconds.

The Folly, being the official repository of the stuff that right-thinking police officers don’t want to talk about and, least of all, have floating around the electronic reporting system for any Tom, Dick or Daily Mail reporter to get hold of, gets its information the old-fashioned way – by word of mouth. Most of it goes to Nightingale, who writes it out, in a very legible hand I might add, on paper which I then file after transferring the basics to a 5x3 card which goes into the appropriate section of the mundane library’s index-card catalogue.

Unlike Nightingale, I type up my reports on my laptop, using my spreadsheet form, print them and then file them in the library. I estimate that the mundane library has over three thousand files, not counting all the ghost-spotting books left uncollated in the 1930s. One day I was going to get it all onto a database – possibly by teaching Molly to type.

Paperwork done, I did half an hour, all I could stand, of Pliny the Elder, whose lasting claim to fame is for writing the first encyclopaedia and sailing a tad too close to Vesuvius on its big day. Then I took Toby for a walk round Russell Square, popped in for a pint in the Marquis and then back to the Folly and bed.

In a unit consisting

Reviews for Whispers Underground

[liscarey · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

When Peter Grant's young cousin, Abigail Kamara, drags him and his colleague and fellow magical apprentice, Leslie May, to a railroad track running under a school playground, they do find the ghost. But the ghost is no threat, and doesn't seem to be pointing to anything of concern now. So when the first case that lands on his desk on Monday is a man stabbed to death on the track at Baker Street Station, he puts the ghost aside, and sets about finding out why the British Transport Police officer, Sgt. Kumar, thinks there's something odd about the case in a way that makes it the Folly's business.The young man on the tracks, James Gallagher, was indeed killed by a magic-imbued weapon, and he is, inconveniently, the son of a US Senator. The weapon was a broken portion of plate, of an unfamiliar make called Empire Pottery. When they go to the young man's home in London, they meet his housemate, a rather flighty and odd young man named Zachary Palmer, and see a figurine that matches the broken shard James was killed with, and which is also imbued with magic. Zach can show them where James got the figurine--but not immediately. The market is closed.In the meantime, there's the question of how James got to where he was found, since none of the monitor cameras caught him going into either Baker Street Station, or any plausible nearby stations. Sgt. Kumar concedes there are secret entrances to the system, but not, he says, secret from the BTP, he says. That would be a terrible idea.Peter finds himself assigned to the murder team investigating James Gallagher's murder, to roughly equal distress on his side, and the murder cops who have never worked with the Folly before. He's also soon working with FBI Special Agent Kimberly Reynolds, a conservative Evangelical who does not regard magic positively. (Fortunately, Aaronovitch is far too good a writer to make her stupid or comical.)Soon Peter's problems include the pottery company which is a small part of a construction company, a dealer in goods of sometimes questionable origin, who are Zach's unloving family because he's the product of an affair with, apparently, one of the Fae, some of Mother Thames's daughters, a visiting Taiwanese magic practitioner, and a whole town, possibly a city, living in the secondary and unused tunnels of the London underground.The diplomacy needed to interact successfully with the river goddesses; the underground fae city; an Evangelical FBI Special Agent who is following US law enforcement rules on carrying, pulling, and using her gun--none of this is what Peter thought he was signing up for when he let himself be recruited into magic and the policing thereof on the strength of his ability to see ghosts. Working with a murder investigation team that has never worked with the Folly before and is understandably both skeptical, and averse to the Folly's negative effect on case clear-up rates is also a challenge, if a more mundane one.It's a challenging case, in which Peter learns more about the magical population of London, magic itself, and his own mind. We also see Leslie May, the other apprentice wizard, who is still adjusting to living with her damaged face, and starting to learning that the people of the magical world look at her maskless face, and don't care. This might have repercussions in later stories.All in all, a very good story, with characters who continue to grow.Recommended.I bought this audiobook.

[bragan_8 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Book three in the Rivers of London series, starring Peter Grant: London cop, apprentice wizard, and not-so-secret nerd. I read the first two of these a number of years ago, and then stalled out on it for no particularly good reason. At least I'm finally getting back to it now!This installment features Peter investigating someone who was stabbed to death on a railroad track with a shard of magical pottery, a case that ends up taking him through lots of tunnels, secret passages, and (unfortunately) sewers. The mystery plot was okay, but not exactly compelling, and it did feel like it was maybe wrapped up a bit too suddenly at the end. But Peter is an appealing character, and there's a lot of humor, some interesting fantasy elements, and an entertainingly earthy depiction of police work, so it's mostly a fun read, anyway.

[jennybeast · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Read it again, this time as a splendidly narrated audio book. Love the police procedural aspects, love the sarcastic humor, and it's a good review of Peter Grant's adventures -- how could I forget Abigail, precocious paranormal girl guide? And The quiet people? And how Zach came to be introduced to our heroes? Also, very interesting trying to get a handle on Leslie from the ground up, and how unique to have a book where the murderous jealousy is over artistic ability? Great stuff.

[tsmom1219 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Really enjoy this series. The worldbuilding is outstanding.

[switchknitter · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm so in love with this series. I can't wait for the next book to come out.

[bardbooks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Full-on fabulous. Adored the two subtle Doctor Who references. Might be the best last line I've ever read.
Might've written more, but must plunge into No. 4!

[5eva5 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A dead body at the Baker Street tube station brings constable and sorcerer’s apprentice Peter Grant literally underground to find what oddity has caused the young man's murder. This is an amazingly entertaining series - the heroes are clever and funny, the baddies are unpredictable and dangerous, and the storylines are as fantastical as they are fantastic. After reading the first book, I immediately bought the rest of the series and this installment too shows I made the right decision. More, please.

[andorion-259107 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book is quite good, but I really have a problem with the blurb. The entire part about the beautiful, ambitious, religious FBI agent - it just doesn't happen that way. Religion is barely mentioned in the book. It simply isn't a factor. This is one of the most misleading blurbs I have read.

[charlotteburt · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Devoured it in three days, probably my favourite of the three so far

[sdramsey-298717 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I adore this series. That is all. :)

[elenaj-147457 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Less gruesome and terrifying than the other two books, which is a plus for me. (Caveat: may not apply if you're claustrophobic.) The ending feels strangely unresolved, though.

[mirihawk · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Each book is better than the last in this series, and should be read in order. I'm doing the audible versions, and they are FABULOUS. Magical Mystery books with great descriptions, interesting plots, and sudden twists that leave you happy and wanting to hear more.

[pdcread · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Back again with Peter Grant, the apprentice wizard who lives at the folly with his mentor, Nightingale. There has been a murder, and something is not quite right, The investigating offices have their suspicions so they call on on the Met's supernatural investigators.

The victim is a young male and he has been killed by a sherd of pottery. But this is the son of a US senator and he wants the FBI involved to find the murderer as soon as possible.

And so Peter begins to delve beneath the surface of the London streets. What he finds is not particularly pleasant, and is a whole lot more dangerous than he anticipated. As the investigation gathers pace so the rivers of London, characters from the previous books, surface again.

Aaronovitch has made this new story a bit darker, with greater tension, but with the same bone dry wit and humour. The luge scene is very amusing, and with the FBI character, Kimberly Reynolds, adds a frisson of competitiveness as Peter seeks the perpetrator of the murder.

On to the next now.

[skybalon · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'd call this the best of the series so far. LIghtweight but quality entertainment. Worth the read.

[macha_4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

third entry in the Rivers of London series. mostly, this is as entertaining and hilarious as usual, but the big discovery was somehow the least compelling. i'm still hooked, though, and i love the personalities Peter Grant is still drawing into his Folly. onward...

[kmartin802_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This episode begins with a dead body in the London Undergroud. James Gallagher is an American, a son of US Senator, and an artist. When he is found dead, and no one can figure out how he got into the Underground, Peter is called in to see if there is any trace of magic. He is also drafted to be part of the Murder Team investigating the death in case anything of a magical nature turns up.Leslie May is on sick leave from the London Police as a result of her encounter with serious magic in the first book of this series. She has discovered a magical talent of her own and has been, so far unofficially, added to the Folly to be taught to use her new magic. She and Peter begin doing an investigation of James Gallagher and meet Zachary Palmer who is Gallagher's roommate - at least until his Senator father arrives.Peter and Leslie's investigation takes them into the London Underground, into a variety of secret tunnels the London Transit Police don't know about, to the sewers that run under London, and to the discovery of a whole new group of people who have been living under London for more than 100 years. Along the way are generous doses of London's history and architecture all discussed in Peter's quirky and irreverent style.This is a police procedural as the investigation into the murder of James Gallagher frames the story. It is also entertaining urban fantasy as Peter learns more about magic. And he learns more about London's odder residents including the gods and goddesses of London's rivers. Fans of the series won't want to miss this episode. Fans of urban fantasy will also enjoy this quirky and very humorous series.

[mrslee_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Peter Grant is exploring the Underground of London, following the vestigia found in a murder weapon. He has an FBI agent with him, as well as his partner Lesley. Oh yes, Nightingale is in the wings as well.I enjoyed the world building in this story. Not just the world of the Whisperers, but Peter Grant's world as well. Lesley is coming into her own, he has potentially found another team member or two? Many possibilities, and they made me want to pick up the next in the series right away. Always enjoy Grant's sarcastic humor, and his view on the world he lives in.

[ladyoflorien_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Another great read in the Peter Grant series. I love the wit and humour infused in the urban fantasy novel. There are always some new characters to learn about and growth of favourites like Lesley.

[ma_washigeri · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Get's 4 stars because I really enjoyed it, laughed out loud, and I have been mean with the stars of parts #1 and #2. The plot was a bit chaotic but the characters are a pleasure. An easy read but the underlying social politics are faced head on with humour and no polemics. Shows the reader instead of telling them what to think. A shame this quality is so rare.
And the strategems of young magical practitioners dealing with life in the magic and non-magic worlds are as compelling as they always are.

[macthekat82 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is some of the best urban fantasy I have read in a long time. The series is just brilliant. Now book 4 come outalready!

[isabelx_21 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was wearing a brand-new stab vest but with a high-visibility jacket over it. I planned to avoid getting shot, through the deployment of peaceful diplomacy and, if that failed, by making sure I stayed back behind the guys with guns. Zach said we'd be better off without the guns, but that's the thing about armed police. When you need them, you generally don't want to be hanging around waiting for them to arrive. It was a good plan, and like all plans since the dawn of time, this would fail to survive contact with real life.With Nightingale still recuperating, Peter has to make an arrangement between the Folly and the British Transport Police, when the weapon used to kill an American art student found dead on an Underground platform turns out to have magical properties. He spends a lot of the book in the sewers and tunnels under Baker Street Station with Sergeant Kumar of the BTP and an FBI agent who has been sent to keep an eye on the case, tracking down a group that neither Nightingale nor Lady Ty was aware of.There was a bit of progress with the search for the other magicians, but it's easy to forget about it when the 'murder of the week' is so interesting.

[seschend · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Enjoyed this one a lot more that its predecessor as it focused more on a case and less on building up the cast of characters (which allowed for better story and mystery).

The only odd thing was I kept waiting for more with an inserted FBI agent character who seemed of more importance based on the back cover copy. I was kept waiting for any payoff from those hints, as it never really went anywhere.

Still, this series is loads of fun if you like British mysteries with a touch of urban magic. Here's hoping the next book gives us more of D.I. Nightengale, as he was very lacking in this episode.

[ajbraithwaite_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The story was easier to follow than that in the previous book, and there were no cringe-making sex scenes, which was a bonus. I like the historical sidelines - the 'fake' houses built above tube lines and Notting Hill's potteries and piggeries past.

Editing still a bit slipshod and I was surprised to find Abigail reading Jackie, which stopped being published in 1993.

[gretchening · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It's rare for me to like a mystery series, but wow the characters in this one are so delightful, diverse, complicated, smart, snarky, and great. I laughed, I gasped, I enjoyed every minute listening while doing otherwise tedious tasks like commuting, traveling, chores. I have rarely liked a dude as much as I like Peter Grant. Kobna Holdbrook-Smith's audiobook narrations continue to be amazing (the accents are all lovely with the exception of the Americans, which are hilariously bad and I find that so endearing).

[passion4reading_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An American art student is found stabbed to death on the London Underground tracks – the murder weapon: a shard of a fruit bowl that DC Grant, Metropolitan police officer and trainee wizard, quickly establishes bears traces of magic. This is the beginning of a murder investigation that takes Peter Grant and his colleague Lesley May into the tunnels and sewers of London while also pursuing clues that could lead them to the Faceless Man, and causing delays on the Tube in the last few days before Christmas is going to be the least of their problems.This is the third case for Peter Grant in the Rivers of London series, and it definitely helps if one has read the two previous novels as repeated references are made to characters and events in Rivers of London and Moon Over Soho. Once again Peter himself provides the narrative in his trademark chatty and wryly humorous style. The events take place over the course of approximately ten days and while the pace is never fast except in a few places, mirroring a real murder investigation to some extent I imagine, the plot moves along nicely and there are definite surprises in store – the beauty of writing fantasy is that you can let your imagination give free rein so that the reader won't have any idea of what's coming next; the novel is also surprisingly knowledgeable about the history of London generally and industrial London and anything transport related in particular, as well as anything involving police procedural. I can't say that all the questions have been answered as I believe Ben Aaronovitch takes the long view with regard to the series, but of course I'm hooked and want to know what else is in store for Peter Grant, Lesley May and DI Nightingale plus the other well-drawn and intriguing characters on the fringes of the narration in the upcoming books in the series, and the last sentence leads the reader neatly into the next instalment, Broken Homes. I thought the editing could have been better, especially the dialogue: considering Peter Grant has a fairly extensive vocabulary and is intelligent and articulate, to read fairly long sections of dialogue where the only verbs used are 'said' and 'asked' was almost painful.

[iambookish-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Unlike some series that become boring and repetitive, this supernatural police series just improves with age. Normally this type of fantasy fiction is so out of my wheel house that I wouldn't even pick it up, but a recommendation from a friend helped me discover this talented author.
This magical branch of the London Metropolitan Police, fights unusual acts of crime, with a very small force of special police officers. I love the humor interjected throughout and maybe that's why I enjoy them so much, or it could be the great writing.

[dlmorrese · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Another fine comic fantasy, the third in the Peter Grant series. I'll admit that some of the British words and phrases baffled me at first. I know what a Ford Focus is, for example. I used to own one. But why does Peter refer to his as an 'Asbo'? I looked it up. Now I know (sort of). There were others, most of which I knew, probably because I lived in England for a while as a kid, my favorite novelists and Brits, and I watch Doctor Who... but I know a lot of my fellow countrymen (USA) will probably be asking WTF a lot when they read this. But read it they should. The stories about a young detective assigned to the 'magic' branch of the London constabulary are a hoot. The characters are engaging, the plots are not overly absurd (for fantasy), and the pacing is quite good. If you liked the other Peter Grant stories, you'll like this one too.

[gypsysmom_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Despite not being a big fan of fantasy, I love this series which combines magic with a police procedural. It looks like there are still four more books in this series so I should be good for a while.Peter Grant, the London police constable who discovered he could sense magic in the first book of the series, is being trained by Inspector Nightingale to perform magic. Nightingale is a wizard who is much older than he looks. He is one of the few wizards left after World War II. Nightingale and Grant and now Lesley May (another police constable who was badly hurt in one of the previous books) all live in the Folly where Molly looks after them and the house. Molly is some kind of magical creature who is also a great cook. Peter is still an active member of the constabulary so he is called in on cases which seem "different". When an American is found dead in Baker Street station in the middle of the night having bled to death from an attack further down the subway line, there is just enough of an off flavour for Inspector Stephanopoulos to call Peter in. Sure enough Peter senses magic on the murder weapon which was a broken piece of pottery. Thus Peter, Lesley and Nightingale are called in to assist with the murder inquiry. Because the victim was an American the FBI sent an agent to observe how the Metropolitan Police Force handle the investigation. Agent Kimberley Reynolds has some difficulty remaining as an observer and turns up in the most unexpected places. Of course this means she sees magic and other things she probably shouldn't see. Is this going to blow the cover off the subtle British handling of magical occurences? Read the book and find out.

[jmkemp-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

These are good light reading, and as well as enjoying that they are set in places I know I also appreciate the geeky roleplaying gamer references that have crept into this volume.

[floratina · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

READ IN ENGLISH

In Peter Grant's third adventure, the ethically challenged wizard apprentice detective constable is quite literally driven to the dark depths of London as he is trying to solve the murder on the son of an American senator which may involve some weird shit (e.g. Magic)...

I'm not too familiar with Urban Fantasy, but from what I've heard this is a nice example, as it really blends the fantasy-bits in with the more believable London. I enjoyed it for sure! It is written in such a witty style, making you laugh out loud on the train - and thus being looked at as if there was something wrong with me. It also involves quite some references! (You can never put to many in a book!). And now, all that's left is to wait till the new book is published...