Tales from the Folly

by Ben Aaronovitch

‘He was a Parisian,’ he said. ‘You can never be sure what Parisians believe in—beyond Paris of course.’

‘You know what the terrible thing about the English is?’ asked Antonin. ‘You never do what is expected of you. Your city was in ruins, your people barely had enough to eat, your government was bankrupt and you think it’s a good idea to hold the Olympics—unbelievable.’

Violent crime, like charity, begins at home.

Underground, the workspaces and stacks were as generously proportioned as a billionaire’s basement, with high ceilings and wide corridors. Everything that wasn’t painted 1970s sci-fi white was a brilliant red or blue, causing me to have an almost irresistible urge to tattoo my eyeball and parkour my way up the walls.

It was already one of the hazards of being police that you became suspicious of the everyday. You didn’t have to spend much time on the job before realising that professional criminals are comparatively rare and that crime is something committed by ordinary people. In fact, the worse the crime the more ordinary the people who committed them—most murderers kill only once, and not just because they’re caught and imprisoned.