Foxglove Summer
Ben Aaronovitch
My Little Ponies meets Noir
Foxglove Summer is the fifth book in Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series. Although I enjoyed the four previous books, this is the first I felt I could award five stars to. Foxglove Summer feels more like a conventional whodunit than any of the previous books. The first three books tried to look like whodunits, but because the solution to the mystery in each of the three cases was basically just "It's magic!", didn't pull it off. Book 4, Broken Homes, was less an exercise in pulling rabbits out of hats than the previous three books, but it was more of a thriller than a whodunit. Broken Homes ended with Peter's being betrayed by colleague and friend Leslie May, so we enter Foxglove Summer waiting for the other shoe to drop on that plot line.
In Foxglove Summer we have a missing persons case -- two young girls have disappeared. It is not in the first instance a murder mystery, although the fear that the girls have been murdered lurks in the background. (And you're not gonna find out from me whether that is the case.) Unusually, this story is outside Peter's usual patch -- it takes place in the vicinity of Leominister (which Peter helpfully tells us is pronounced Leminster), a small town pretty far west of London, almost Wales, in fact. Aaronovitch obviously spent some time getting to know the place, so that strong sense of place that is so characteristic of the Rivers of London series is present here, too.
Peter visits the Leominister area on an errand for Nightingale. He then volunteers to aid the locals with the full-scale search for the girls that kicks off. His help is somewhat reluctantly accepted -- reluctantly because none of the regular cops want to entertain the idea that there is a "Falcon" angle to the case (Falcon has become police jargon for "magic", a word they entirely eschew) -- but accepted nonetheless because they're getting nowhere fast and they want to cover their asses just in case.
Peter investigates. Even though he is investigating the possibility of magic involvement in the girls' disappearance, the investigation is mostly conventional -- searches and interviews. He makes progress. There is indeed a "My Little Ponies" angle, but the story ends up feeling pretty dark.
My appreciation of this book improved in part because of a change, not in the novels, but in my understanding. In my reviews of the previous two books, Whispers Under Ground and Broken Homes, I complained about Peter's unpleasant architectural snobbishness. Reading Foxglove Summer, I finally twigged to Aaronovitch's con. It's a slightly more subtle version of Peter's struggles with the first-person accusative pronoun, which befuddles many reviewers. Aaronovitch means for Peter to be a slightly ridiculous figure. This works because Peter has the grace to laugh at himself. It also helps that Peter is a fine fellow: hard-working, brave, loyal to his friends, creative, and smarter than the average bear.
OK, so I'm there now. It only took me five books to arrive.