And so to book three of Ben Aaronovitch‘s Peter Grant series: see my reviews of book one and book two to catch up with the meta-story so far.

Whispers Under Ground is not the book I was expecting. I’m not sure what my expectations were, precisely: perhaps something focusing more on what seems to be the arc of the series. I should have known better. To reach the end-of-level baddie you must fight several skirmishes, and this is merely book three of n where n ≥ 6 (I’m three books behind the curve).

The arc features in Whispers, of course, as a subplot. Our protagonist Peter makes progress on the hunt for the big bad, with his mentor Nightingale and colleague Lesley.

The main plot is a murder-mystery, with a suitably magical twist. The son of an American senator is killed in a manner curious enough for the Met to call in their experts on the peculiar: Grant and chums. This is one of the things I love about the series. Magic and its attending weirdness is known within the Met, to those in the higher echelons at least. It’s not something they especially want civilians to catch on to, and Peter Grant’s adventures in previous books have become a little too high profile for those with the peakiest of caps.

Nevertheless they need him. And he needs them, for they can bring the corporeal might of the force into play when some old-fashioned coppering is required. In this case, some below-ground sniffing around in the sewers and amongst the tube mice after the middle rail has been unplugged for the night.

The looming question for me – and whether this is tackled by later books I have yet to learn – is for how long the public can remain unaware of the Met’s mini-Hogwarts. Given the number of goings on, and the constabular tonnage that must surely by now be starting to twig, it’s becoming ever more implausible that the secret remains a secret. But then, in Grant’s universe, the secret has already been successfully kept for several generations, and deployed in two world wars. (I’d like to learn more about this back story. I suspect I won’t: clunking out a full chronology causes all mystery to waft up the chimney. Plus it commits the writer, leaving no room for manoeuvre should better ideas spring to mind. Tolkien is the exception, mainly because he knew what everyone in Middle Earth had for breakfast every day of their lives and wrote it all down in elvish poetry.)

I didn’t feel as much tension in Whispers as in previous: the climax is not as jangly. Not a bad thing – too many TV shows, for example, believe that each season’s finale must outdo last season’s by a factor of 2.718, proceeding rapidly to exploding universes resolved by honking red reset buttons, hand-waving, love, dreams, etc. Here it’s a calmer outcome, and I wonder if book four in the series, already on my pile, will include a major revelation or two to make up for it.

The last few pages of Whispers Under Ground indicate Aaronovitch knows where he’s going, back in the past present when this book came out. Pieces on the board shuffling into position. Characters I’m sure we’ll see again In my case, in a couple of months, I expect.

In summary: I’m still amazed this isn’t on TV yet.