Book review: Whispers Underground

The "Rivers of London" series of supernatural crime novels by Ben Aaronovitch continues to be entertaining; having built stories first around the smaller rivers connected to the Thames (whose anthropomorphic incarnations continue to be recurring characters) and the Soho jazz scene, the third book takes DC Peter Grant to the London Underground, where an American student has been murdered.

I was a bit worried that Whispers Underground would create a supernatural underworld in the Tube that would be too similar to Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, but it turns out to be a much more recognisable world than that, with the action soon moving away from the tracks to the sewers and then an entirely different kind of underground subculture. If anything I would have preferred it if the story had stuck closer to the Tube itself as it's an old network with a lot of quirks and plenty of scope to be given spooky twists, but for the most part this is a more generalised subterranean London, the specific references to the Tube ending up confined to the station names that provide the chapter headings (I do like that they end up at Mornington Crescent for the final chapter.)

How it all fits into the initial mystery plot does seem to get a bit vague in the third quarter of the novel but Aaronovitch does pull it all back together in the end, and this was another enjoyable read.