...a tingle of vestigium. Nothing professionally worrying, just a whiff of glitter and stardust. A middle-aged woman a couple of armpits down the carriage from me said, ‘It’s a godawful small affair,’ and burst into tears. As the train pulled out I thought I heard a man’s voice say, ‘To the girl with the mousy hair,’ but the noise of the train drowned it out. By the time we got to Colliers Wood, nobody was singing but I’d picked up enough of a nearby conversation to learn that David Bowie was dead. [loc. 118]
After the story arc that culminated in Lies Sleeping, I was interested to see where Aaronovitch was going next with Peter Grant, the Folly, Beverley &co. The answer? Old Street roundabout, which is where I used to work BC (Before Covid). Or in another sense, 42. (The answer, that is. This book features a plethora of Hitch-Hiker's Guide references, which became rather wearing ...)
Set in winter, 2015/2016, before the world changed. Peter is undercover as security at the Serious Cybernetics Corporation, trying to work out what's in the secret room with all its safeguards. Also interested in that room and its contents is Stephen, who is a person of interest from a previous case: cue back-and-forth timeline. There's some connection to an artifact known as the Mary Engine, which may have been constructed by Ada Lovelace. And there's a missing music book for a 137-key fairground organ.
False Value didn't really satisfy me, because it felt almost like the beginning of a new series -- effectively a new cast, and new locations: Peter now lives with Beverley -- and at this point that's not what I want. I was hoping for more Nightingale, more foxen, more Varvara (whatever happened to Varvara?), more Abigail and Guleed and Jaget ... Which is not to say that Peter's new colleagues are uninteresting, but they are not magical (though one is trans, which is well-handled).
I enjoyed the Old Street references (ah, drinks at the Magic Roundabout!) and the scenes with Peter and Bev, and I suspect that a reread would help me appreciate the plot more than on first reading. (It might also help me make sense of the title.) But this is probably my least favourite of the series to date.
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