Relaxation reading: "Whispers Under Ground" by Ben Aaronovitch

Where once there was the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency to provide that slightly guilty low-brow relief from "worthwhile" books, now there is the Peter Grant series of sweetwise-magical-London-copper tales from the Metropolis. This is third in the series, and the third I have read, and while it is true that it will be hard to recapture the delight of discovery in the first book in the series, The Rivers of London, I did not feel the disappointment which came with the second, Moon Over Soho. 

Perhaps it's just that Aaronovitch has relaxed a bit. He seems more comfortable with his characters, less stressed about having them perform for us, so more able to get on and tell his fantastical tale. Once again, it is impossible not to take to hero-narrator Peter Grant, he of formidable Sierra Leonian mum (and the family that goes with her) and just agreeably dissolute jazz-playing London dad, who relates his story in witty, self-deprecating style. The cast of characters is gradually consolidating around him: mainstream senior officers Seawoll and Stephanopoulos who resent, but ultimately accept, PC Grant's specialisation in "weird stuff", formerly high-flying but now fellow magical apprentice PC Lesley May, who is made to be Grant's love interest, but who has to wear a mask to conceal the hideous destruction of her face which occurred in the Rivers of London, DCI Nightingale, Grant's other-wordly Guvnor and only-surviving postwar wizard in the land working for the forces of law and order, the weird and taciturn Molly, housekeeper at magical HQ, the Folly, who definitely has something of the night about her, as well as many delightful minor characters, such as the tribe of smart-talking, bling-toting London-Nigerian water divinities, who pop up not infrequently, ostensibly to give Grant a hard time, while in fact charmed into helping him out of this or that magical scrape.


So yes, I've warmed again to this series, and will doubtless take refuge in book 4 at some point when I need something to read during Ryanair safety announcements and sales pitches for scratch cards and smoke-free cigarettes.

It helps too that the plot seems more assured (spoiler alert!!!), with the story gradually revealing the presence of a lost community of industrious, socially conservative, steam-punk powered descendants of Victorian tunnellers inhabiting the netherworld of forgotten/hidden passages of the London sewer and Underground systems. It is a satisfyingly page-turning plot and reminded me sporadically of Doctor Who, for which Aaronovitch was in fact a scriptwriter. And, yes, I do seem to have a thing about underground London.

Enough said, this is a book which remains very much at the 'fun' end of the spectrum. If you like the sound of it, start with The Rivers of London, still the most pleasing. Otherwise, tolerate my occasional sorties into the world of PC Peter Grant.