We still don’t know where the talking foxes come from, what they think they’re up to, or why they’re up in my business. I gave one half a Greggs sausage roll once. Maybe they imprinted. [loc. 419]
A fun novella focussing on Abigail's adventures on Hampstead Heath: it's set in the summer of 2013, when Peter Grant is off in Herefordshire being menaced by unicorns, and though it doesn't really add anything to the main Rivers of London arc, it does establish Abigail as a competent, savvy and likeable young woman.
Teenagers are going missing, but only for a couple of nights, and without any physical or psychological damage apart from mild amnesia. Abigail is convinced the disappearances are connected. She begins to investigate, with the help of her new friend Simon and a shadowy organisation of talking foxes who are accomplished spies and detectives, and have picked up London slang from ... somewhere.
The foxes are awesome, and so is Abigail. She's a complex character with a difficult family life and enough courage and curiosity to make her a formidable wizard when she's older. And she takes a lot of weirdness in her stride, unlike Peter in the early books. This was a cheering read for a rainy Saturday, with Discworld and Hitchhiker's references and a sharp eye for London street life: I hope we'll get more Abigail from Aaronovitch.
Shout-out to Harold Postmartin's explicatory footnotes on London street slang. I was charmed.
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