Books: The Masquerades of Spring By Ben Aaronovitch (2024)

“Here we meet Augustus Berrycloth-Young - fop, flaneur, and Englishman abroad - as he chronicles the Jazz Age from his perch atop the city that never sleeps. That is, until his old friend Thomas Nightingale arrives, pursuing a rather mysterious affair concerning an old saxophone - which will take Gussie from his warm bed, to the cold shores of Long Island, and down to the jazz clubs where music, magic, and madness haunt the shadows.”

The Masquerades of Spring is another novella to the Rivers of London series. As with the other ones, Peter Grant is nowhere to be found, as the book is set in the mid 1920s.

Augustus Berrycloth-Young (AKA Gussie) is a delightfully fun character and you can’t help but like him from the start. He's a bit of a dandy, incredibly witty, and very, very British. This novella gives Aaronovitch more comic license gets a better grip on both British and American slang that caused me some ire in Winter’s Gift.

It’s also very clear that Augustus is based on Bertie Wooster, created by P.G. Wodehouse. He’s a jazz-loving, “wizard” whose lack of insight rivals that legendary character. Still, his take on understanding opera is fairly brilliant:

"Now, I have often said that the principal difference between the musical offerings of Sissle and Blake, Gershwin and Gershwin, Rodgers and Hart, and those of the likes of Verdi, Tosca and some other bally Italian I have forgotten the name of, is that one might take one’s seat for the former with no fear that one will leave the theatre none the wiser with regards to the story. Whereas on those occasions when I have been dragged bodily to the opera, I have spent the entire show trying to work out why Man A is singing angrily at Man B while Woman C trills sadly in the corner. And to rub salt into the wound, as it were, I have the strongest feeling that everybody else in the theatre but me knows exactly what is going on."

It’s also fun to watch a British writer take a British character and drop him in New York of the 1920s, with its prohibitions, fancy clothes, and its brutish police force. So while it offers no new insight into Nightingale, it doesn’t really matter, as Augustus Berrycloth-Young makes the entire story shine. I wonder if Aaronovitch will let us see anymore adventures of Gussie and his manservant/lover Lucien (AKA as Lucy).