Friday 4 January 2013

Book Review | London Falling by Paul Cornell

The dark is rising...

Detective Inspector James Quill is about to complete the drugs bust of his career. Then his prize suspect Rob Toshack is murdered in custody. Furious, Quill pursues the investigation, co-opting intelligence analyst Lisa Ross and undercover cops Costain and Sefton. But nothing about Toshack’s murder is normal.

Toshack had struck a bargain with a vindictive entity, whose occult powers kept Toshack one step ahead of the law – until his luck ran out. Now, the team must find a 'suspect' who can bend space and time and alter memory itself. And they will kill again. As the group starts to see London’s sinister magic for themselves, they have two choices: panic or use their new abilities. Then they must hunt a terrifying supernatural force the only way they know how: using police methods, equipment and tactics. But they must all learn the rules of this new game - and quickly. More than their lives will depend on it.

***

Time is running out for undercover coppers Tony Costain and Kevin Sefton. For years they've been working on exposing Rob Toshack for the kingpin of crime he undoubtedly is, but now that they've infiltrated the upper echelons of his organisation, the powers that be declare an imminent deadline: come hell or high water, they're to take him at midnight tonight. But to date, their target's been smart. The Met, for all their efforts, still don't have anything solid to hold him on.

What a stroke of luck, then, that Toshack appears to be as desperate as our listless lot. As the witching hour approaches, he goes from door to door, robbing and ransacking with nary a care; searching, seemingly, for some way out of a situation that he shouldn't know word one about. When he comes up with nothing, he's nicked — alongside most of his enforcers.

Detective Inspector James Quill knows that the charges probably won't stick, but he has at Toshack in the interview room in any event, giving it his exhausted all. Shortly, to the shock and horror of all involved, their prime suspect is in the middle of confessing to everything... when he goes and explodes!
"[Quill] fell with the force of it, hit the desk and then fell. Great gouts of blood, far too much, flew around him, covering the furniture, the tape recorder, the room, as if a bucket of it had been thrown over him. Quill managed to heave himself upright, and found blood still showering like rain. He was covered in it. So was the brief, who was yelling hysterically. Toshack [...] was just a mass of blood which had come from that mouth, that had burst from him, from his lolling dead head." (pp.37-8)
In the aftermath of this horrific incident, a small but perfectly formed unit of coppers is formed from the embers of Operation Longfellow. Quill, Costain and Sefton are all enlisted, whatever their differences, as is Lisa Ross, an outside intelligence analyst with inside ties to the Toshack family. With the clock ticking, their continuing mission: to investigate the impossible, explain the inexplicable - beginning with the spontaneous eruption of public enemy number one - and arrest the offending entities, be they beholden to Her Majesty's laws of conduct or not.

Given that this is an urban fantasy novel, albeit in crime fiction's clothing, I warrant they won't be.

Having worked steadily in a spread of literary industries since winning a young writer's competition in 1990, Paul Cornell is the sort of author whose name you don't know that you do know. If that's the case, be warned you will after this. Currently, he scripts Demon Knights for DC's New 52, Saucer Country for Vertigo, and his new Wolverine series is forthcoming from Marvel as part of the NOW! initiative. In the intervening years, Cornell has had a baker's dozen of Doctor Who novels published, two non tie-ins entitled British Summertime and Something More, meanwhile he's composed countless teleplays for UK mainstays such as CasualtyCoronation Street, and of course the Time Lord's own show.

For all that, though, London Falling - and the sequels sure to succeed it in time - may be where Cornell makes his most lasting mark. He's described it himself as 'The Bill do Buffy,' and this is a remarkably apt reference point, though it may take a little explaining. Gone but not forgotten, The Bill was a British soap opera come police procedural, as interested in the highs and lows of the lives of its characters as the crimes they quashed each episode; not dissimilar to Cornell's new novel. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, meanwhile, was all charm and banter, by way of weekly monsters and overarching big bads. Excepting the inimitable Whedonesque wit, London Falling can count all of the above amongst its eventual strengths.

Pity, then, that it begins so nondescriptly, with the lastmost morsels of another novel's plot - or so it seems - and a cast of coppers so caught up in the crush to catch Toshack that they come across as caricatures: there's the possibly corrupt undercover, the know-it-all new blood, and the no-nonsense boss who's lost faith in the former. Only Lisa Ross, the obsessive analyst with a tragic past, reads as real from the first. The others take too long to develop beyond simple sketches, and though in the fullness of time their credibility increases, London Falling is something of a slog in the interim, particularly considering the author's jocular verbosity.

A couple of hours in, however, in the home of the wickedest witch there ever was in West Ham, everything changes. Our foursome become cursed with a sort of second sight which allows them to glimpse stark darkness gathering in a world under even London's underworld. As Ross reports:
"She had felt joys among the fears, even, but it had been mostly fear. There had been motion between the trees of Hyde Park, and strange lights manifesting, in colours she wasn't able to put a name to. Things moved between the trees faster than was possible. There had been unexpected structures in silhouette. Shadows lurking under shadows." (p.85)
From here on out, London Falling is suddenly alive with excitement. Once our officers have come to terms with their hellish new perspectives, they see Mora Losley for what she is - as do we - and their pursuit of her, under the umbrella of Operation Toto, is singularly gripping. Hereafter the sense of tension that had previously peppered the procedure spreads like an infection. There are some truly gruesome moments in the offing, and when Cornell hits home with a harrowing twist involving Quill, the stakes finally feel meaningful.

To wit, this manic middle section gives way to such a darkly fantastic last act that giving London Falling's overburdened opening a free pass seems a small price to pay. I only wish I could talk more about it, but to do so would be to give the entire affair away. Rather rest assured that at the end of the day, it's a beautiful game, as they say, and alongside the fans of crime and urban fantasy fiction London Falling stands to attract - for all the right reasons, for once - soccer supporters will also be in their element.

Especially for the latter lot, then: though Paul Cornell fumbles his first touch of the football, in a terrific turn of events, he finds his feet... he shoots... he scores!

And the crowd goes wild.

...

This review was originally published, in a slightly altered form, on Tor.com.

***

London Falling
by Paul Cornell

UK Publication: December 2012, Tor
US Publication: April 2013, Tor

Buy this book from
Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com
IndieBound / The Book Depository

Recommended and Related Reading

5 comments:

  1. Thanks, Niall. This dovetails with other reviews I've read of Paul's book.

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    1. Good sir, you're well and truly welcome!

      I'll be looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the thing when and if you read it.

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  2. Sounds like a more serious version of Ben Aaranovitch's books.

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    1. Actually, we had a bit of a chat about that similarity when the review was posted on tor.com. In short, Adi, you're spot on. London Falling and Rivers of London share an alarming number of superficial similarities - including setting and premise - but they're two very different texts in terms of mood and tone: Ben Aaronivitch's book represents a whimsical whistle-stop tour of the city and its cheering supernatural history next to Paul Cornell's positively malignant London and the dark forces that look to lay waste to the place.

      I couldn't say which novel I enjoyed more, truth be told, but they're both rousing reads, indeed.

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  3. I'm certainly curious about this one and despite the lackluster opening you sell the rest of it really good. I just watched Paul Cornell's interview on Sword and Laser a few days ago and he was talking about this one and seemed very excited about it.

    Love the cover with the upside down building on it, much better than the other one.

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