★★★★☆ Broken Homes, by Ben Aaronovitch
** spoiler alert ** Peter and Lesley partner for the last time
Broken Homes
Ben Aaronovitch
** spoiler alert **
Peter and Lesley partner for the last time
I read Ben Aaronovitch's Broken Homes for the first time a bit over a year ago, 23-25-Mar-2022, on kindle. You can find my review here. Since then I have read the entire extant Rivers of London series, i.e. all novels through Amongst Our Weapons as well as short stories and novellas through Winter's Gifts.
I am now working my way through the series in audiobook format, because Kobna Holdbrook-Smith is such a good narrator. Also, the experience of hearing the books, knowing how everything will eventually turn out, is different from the first read. Since there are no North American accents for him to murder, Kobna does his usual excellent job.
This one is heavier than usual on the architectural allusions -- if that is even possible -- because it's all about an imaginary building by an imaginary German architect built to serve as a magic capacitor. But the more interesting story here is the (irrevocable?) bust-up of the Peter-Lesley friendship. Peter and Lesley are sort of undercover in this one, living together in an apartment in the aforementioned imaginary building.
The huge shocker is Lesley's betrayal of Peter at the end. If listening to the audiobook is your first experience of Broken Homes, it must send quite a thrill up your spine when Lesley tasers Peter in the back. This is slightly mitigated by her words, “No, that wasn’t part of the deal,” presumably letting the Faceless Man know that she won't stand for Peter's murder, but at the same time revealing that she made a deal to betray Peter.
For me, of course, the shock was short-circuited by advance knowledge. I might even be inclined to advise first-time readers of Rivers of London to do just this one in audio.