With TV shows like Grimm and Supernatural and new series
debuting this fall, Sleepy Hollow and Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. being
just two, media outlets like TV networks and movie studios have taken the basic
premise of the procedural crime show and added an element of urban fantasy to
attract a larger demographic. But fantasy and science fiction authors have
doing this for a while, most notably with Neil Gaiman.
Paul Cornell is known for his long association with Doctor
Who (he wrote five novels in the New Adventure line when the BBC series was in
its wilderness years, including Human Nature, which he adapted into the highly praised 2-part
2007 Who episode Human Nature and The Family of Blood) and creating the Bernice
Summerfield character companion that was eventually spun off into her own
series. Cornell has also written for a number of British comics, as well as
Marvel Comics and DC Comics in America, and with London Falling, we see his
third novel (behind 200ls Something More and 2002s British Summertime) and the beginning
of a new series.
After Rob Toshack, London crime boss, dies a horrific death
while being interrogated, four members of the London Metropolitan Police
Service encounter something in a crime scene that gives them the Sight.
Transformed, they're now able to access an entirely new London, one that's more
dangerous than they ever thought possible.
While I generally find police procedurals –at least the ones
presented on TV- to be dull, pedantic and predictable, Cornell is able to
balance some of the more mundane aspect of police work with the paranormal,
creating a clever book that is grim, bloody and page-turning.
For readers of your typical crime novels, the book gets off
to an easy start before Cornell begins putting on the pressure with a complex
story and characters that are all very well drawn out. And that is the best
aspect of the book, as much as it’s a plot driven novel, author Cornell takes
his time fleshing out the characters. We got cops like Kev Sefton, a sort-of
closeted gay man (which I found interesting), Quinn , a cop with a strained
home life -even his wife Sarah calls him by his surname, which is odd and could
explain things. There’s Costain, a good undercover cop (UC as Cornell ramps up
the acronyms and British slang –more on that below) who seems to want to escape
all the real life horrors of being a cop and police analyst Lisa Ross, who is
more than a Girl Friday –her Dad was murdered by Toshack.
Soon they quartet understand they’re battling not only their
own demons but the ones that run rampant through London, including one Mora
Losley, a particularly vile woman who is killing kids as sacrifice to her
beloved football team, West Ham United. The problem is she’s been doing it for
centuries (and Losely ability to manipulate memories is horrifying, but also a
clever device –which explains how she was able to hide her antics from the real
world for so long).
The book just gets better as is goes along, leaving me on
the edge of chair so to speak.
But (yes there is a “but”), I did grow weary of Cornell’s
use of the British slang “nick.” Apparently, it has many meanings (“In zero
time, Brockley nick had done them proud…”, “…and keep going all the way to your
nick…”, “Get back to the nick…”) and while I appreciate that the US publishers
of this book did not alter it too much, I found myself being stopped by its
various use. Of course, being an American this may make me sound like an
asshole, but I would’ve hoped Cornell understood that some of his readers may
not be British and might need a wee bit of an explanation of the word “nick”
and how it can mean so many different things (there is a glossary at the end,
and while useful, it failed to explain that word or what a “brief,” was, though
I quickly made the connection that it meant a lawyer).
Still, an enjoyable first book in a series.
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