★★★☆☆ Moment 18, Sidcup Halloween 2021, by Ben Aaronovich

Frustratingly incomplete

Moment 18, Sidcup Halloween 2021

Ben Aaronovitch

Ben Aaronovitch’s moments are not, in most cases, actual stories in the strict sense. Rather they are vignettes, brief glimpses into the lives of the characters that appears in his Rivers of London stories and novels. I generally enjoy them, sketchy though they are. This one, alas, is related to a novelette Aaronovitch wrote for the 200th Anniversary of the London Zoo. You can read Moment 18 here. (That is a mailchimp link. It works right now, but it may not be a permalink.) It is about a Sidcup police officer named Catherine Chandler and our old friend Peter Grant, who gets called to the scene where she finds something funny.

Aaronovitch hints that the novelette concerns Operation Zebra Oboe Oboe. That might even be its title, though he doesn’t definitely say so.

And where can you read this novelette? You can read it in the Library of the Zoological Society of London, which is surprise! surprise! in London. You have to get your ass to London to read this novella. And I don’t mean London, Ontario, which is a short drive from my home. No, to read Operation Zebra Oboe Oboe, if that is indeed the title, you have to go there, to London, UK. Aaronovitch says,

At the moment this is an exclusive gift for members of the ZSL and not available to the wider public…

The words “At the moment” seemed to suggest that one day we will get to see Operation Zebra Oboe Oboe. When and if that happens, I may revise this review of Moment 18.

“Moment 18, Sidcup Halloween 2021”