Somebody’s murdered - whodunit?
Doesn’t sound like much of a story does it? It’s not. Honestly, I was gobsmacked that Ben Aaronovitch got a 400+ page novel out of something so insubstantial. Nothing. Happens. For hundreds of pages! This is how you write like a hack professionally, guys.
Doesn’t sound like much of a story does it? It’s not. Honestly, I was gobsmacked that Ben Aaronovitch got a 400+ page novel out of something so insubstantial. Nothing. Happens. For hundreds of pages! This is how you write like a hack professionally, guys.
The narrative is rambling, unfocused, horribly overlong and utterly boring. A vague and unmemorable murder happens near the start and then for practically every scene after I kept wondering what relevance they had to the crime Peter and Lesley were investigating. The answer, I quickly found out, was not at all - tenuous at best. You could essentially read up to the murder then skip to the last thirty pages and not miss a damn thing!
Aaronovitch’s knowledge of London and the occasional tidbits of its esoteric history he imparts were the only interesting aspects of the book, and he does write in a smooth, easy style. Those are the only positive things I can say about Whispers Under Ground.
This series started so amazingly with that first book and yet already at this third book the quality is all but gone; it’s making me wonder, after the slightly better than this but still disappointing second book, that if I’ve seen the best this writer can offer and all that’s left is dross?
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