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If anyone knew about untimely and unnatural deaths it was Polidori, who literally wrote the book on the subject just before drinking cyanide—it’s called An Investigation into Unnatural Deaths in London in the Years 1768–1810 and it weighs over two pounds—I just hoped that reading it didn’t drive me to suicide too.
reading books like Essays on the Metaphysical by John “never saw a polysyllabic word he didn’t like” Cartwright.
At this very moment astronomers are detecting planets around distant stars by measuring how much their orbits wobble and the clever people at CERN are smashing particles together in the hope that Doctor Who will turn up and tell them to stop. The story of how we measure the physical universe is the history of science itself.
It was one of those tragic relationships: I’m a junior policeman, she’s the goddess of a suburban river in South London—it was never going to work out.
The pianist, Daniel Hossack, was a classically trained music teacher at Westminster School for the terminally privileged.
The study of the victim is called victimology because everything sounds better with an ology tacked on the end.
I’ve never been what you’d call a strong swimmer but if the alternative is being a statistic it’s amazing what you can pull out of the reserves.
Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, I thought. For they are soggy and hard to light.
I’m an old-fashioned copper—I don’t believe in breaking the laws of thermodynamics.
One thing for certain, Abigail who lived up the road was going on my watch list. In fact I was going to create a watch list just so I could put Abigail at the top of it.
“Do you know anyone who still has a VHS?” “It has to be something he couldn’t risk getting digitized,” I said. “These days?” said Trollope. “It would have to be something really disgusting or illegal. Child porn, or snuff movies, or, I don’t know, kitten strangling.”
We were aiming for a cross between Kafka and Orwell, which just goes to show how dangerous it can be when your police officers are better read than you are.
woke up again in the late afternoon, feeling sticky and with the discombobulated feeling you get when you sleep through the day for no good reason.
“Or more than one partner. There could be—what do you call a group of magicians?” I asked. “A gang, a coven?” “An argument,” said Dr. Walid. “It’s an argument of wizards.”
In the 1960s the planning department of the London County Council, whose unofficial motto was Finishing What the Luftwaffe Started, decided that what London really needed was a series of orbital motorways driven through its heart.
This is your brain, which is not only pristine and unsullied by thought, but also showing no sign of any lesions.”
For a terrifying moment I thought he was going to hug me, but fortunately we both remembered we were English just in time. Still, it was a close call.
“You can’t just off someone because it’s more convenient,” I said. “What did all your friends die for, all those names on the wall, what did they die for if not for that?” He recoiled. “I don’t know what they died for,” he said. “I didn’t know then and I still don’t know now.” “Well, I do,” I said. “Even if you’ve forgotten. They died because they thought there was a better way of doing things, even if they were still arguing about what it was.”
