My Rereading Challenge Weeks 2&3

So, in the last two weeks I have finished the book I was reading at the end of Week 1, read another and completed half of a third. Oh, and I have read a few chapters of a Kenneth Williams autobiography that is there when I can’t properly concentrate on a storyline on the evening train! Not much for me, but I am not back to my full 4 day a week commute which is what helps me speed through my reads.

Broken Homes by Ben Aaronovitch

Broken Homes is the fourth book in the Rivers of London series which I have read entirely through my local library. It is simply brilliant, unsurprisingly as the rest of the series is also brilliant. The series features, as its central character, PC Peter Grant, who discovers that he has latent magical abilities. He is seconded to a magical unit, which is under the charge of Inspector Thomas Nightingale, and exceptionally powerful wizard, that operates from a house called The Folly. He and his partner, PC Lesley May, learn basic spells and operate within the grey area of crime and magic. Lesley, having suffered catastrophic damage to her face, is on semi-permanent leave from the regular police but has become a de facto member of Falcon, the name given to the Folly and its supernatural remit by the Metropolitan Police.

This book is centred around the Elephant and Castle, specifically the Skygarden Tower, which is a 60s tower block built in the brutalist style but bafflingly a listed building. It becomes clear that magic is afoot when Peter finds out that the garden that rings the block contains river spirits and tree nymphs. Before long, Peter realises that the block itself could be the source of dangerous magic that would be impossible to control if it was allowed to escape.

The series just gets better and better in my view, and reading the books in order has been a fantastic way to immerse myself properly in the world of Rivers of London. Ben Aaronovitch writes in a style that is a hybrid of police procedural and Terry Pratchett, and it is utterly addictive. The confidence in his world and his writing just jumps off of the page, and it this confidence that allows him to throw in a jaw dropping twist very near the end that left me completely shocked. I know that there are a further four books in this series, and I intend to borrow all of them from the library before the year is out, assuming they are available. Indeed, I am reading the sixth book at the moment.

Strange Conflict by Dennis Wheatley

Just before this challenge started I bought a book from eBay which I read two or three times as a teenager during my horror phase! My original copy had gone ages ago, and I hadn’t been able to find it since in any charity shop or second hand bookshop. Strange Conflict was published in 1941 and, being set in WWII, was an extremely contemporary tale of espionage centred around the losses suffered by the Atlantic Convoys. When the Duc de Richleau suggests to Admiral Pellinore that the Nazis are using Black Magic, it is initially dismissed out of hand, but once he has convinced the admiral that the threat is real, it is time for him and his companions to take the battle to their mortal enemies on the astral plane. Duc de Richleau and his friends, Simon, Rex, Richard and Marie Lou, were featured in a number of previous books so you get little real backstory here, but they are already a tight knit team having faced Black Magic practitioners of many types already. These adventures are alluded to but not concentrated on in any detail.

OK, I have to give you a very clear warning. As Talking Pictures TV might say, the book features language and attitudes that some people may find offensive. The amount of overt racism, by modern standards, is quite shocking, but it is little different to anything that you might read in James Bond, and it does avoid the rampant misogyny of Ian Fleming’s original novels. If you accept it as being of its time, you are left with a very well written, well paced and thought provoking novel. I enjoyed the story probably as much this time around as I had as a teenager, but I don’t know if it was the nostalgic pull of rereading an old favourite. What I can say is that it would make an excellent film or TV series with its fast paced plot, and that if you can get past the overtly colonial attitudes of its writer, I do think it stands up well as a work of literature.

In Progress

Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch, the fifth book of the Rivers of London series. Also borrowed from the library the final Geek Girl novel which I can’t wait to read. Until next week then, it’s bye for now. Happy reading!