False Value: Book 8 in the #1 bestselling Rivers of London series (A Rivers of London novel)

Product Information

With his girlfriend Beverley’s pregnancy and the death of Martin Chorley, once known as the Faceless Man, Peter is entering a new chapter of life. His background in law enforcement and subsequent suspension makes him the ideal candidate for an investigator job in the private sector, at a tech company run by an Elon Musk type of character, to be precise. Peter's job begins as "to find the rat among the mice," meaning the SCC suspects corporate espionage but couldn't suss out the infiltrator, and the job ends with him breaking and entering in the middle of the night with two librarians in tow, and then getting fired when his cover is blown. A bit of wrangling needed to happen and the full interesting import of later spoiler territory plot items comes to fruition nicely.

Maybe Aaronovitch having Peter deal with "The Faceless Man" in the last book meant we would get filler, but geez this is boring. This audiobook contains all the signature humour and every-man bluntness we have come to love from Peter Grant, and much more information about the international magical community. I think her name is mentioned once or twice but she isn’t part of this story and for that I’m grateful. Peter’s job begins as “to find the rat among the mice,” meaning the SCC suspects corporate espionage but couldn’t suss out the infiltrator, and the job ends with him breaking and entering in the middle of the night with two librarians in tow, and then getting fired when his cover is blown.

The first seven books had a long narrative arc involving the Faceless Man, which was mostly resolved in Book Seven, although Lesley remained at large. And most of the time Nightingale is just ‘hanging around’ in case Peter needs back-up, which is a shame.

It makes sense; Aaronovitch tends to be light on descriptives, so a good actor can bring the character to life. This book also relies heavily on the reader being familiar with all of Aaronovitch’s novellas, short stories and graphic novels, particularly The Furthest Station, but I don’t think it’s realistic to expect novel readers to keep up with all these associated stories (personally, I gave up on the graphic novels after all the gratuitous female nudity in Black Mould). Peter spends much of this investigation by himself, working through all its snotty tangles using his own skills and experience, and I gotta say, the guy is a natural-born problem-solver, which I have not always appreciated, too busy griping about his magical education and policing tactics. A technology that stretches back to Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage and forward to the future of artificial intelligence. And my problem is that I don’t know whether I want to put up with that – whether I can put up with that.I will be first to say I love Hitchhiker’s in many forms (excepting the movie, really), but even I found this overkill. There’s a few humorous observations along the way, and some waxing emotional over Bev, but for the most part, I found the tone straight-forward and serious. I’ve always got a kick out of his dry humor and a healthy dose of self-deprecation and his Millenial-ness (yup, that’s a word, I swear) - but once I think about it there has not been much emotional growth there since the first book in the series. If he chooses to keep going in the same direction as False Value, I’m sure he’ll have lots of readers who’ll follow him, but I’m afraid I won’t be one of them.