It started at one thirty on a cold Tuesday morning in January when Martin Turner, Street performer and, in his own words, apprentice gigolo, tripped over a body in front of the West Portico of St. Pau...
I've already told the police what happened, they didn't believe me. Why should you,' he said.'Because we're the people that believe people that other people don't believe,' I said.'How can I know that...
I turned right onto the A410 which went north with suspiciously Roman straightness toward Aymestrey, which is less a village than a diorama of the last six hundred years of English vernacular architec...
I sighed and went back to my book, in which Morgoth nicked the eponymous jewels and had away with them back to Angbad. Sorry mate, I thought, not my jurisdiction. Did you have them insured? Whereupon...
I listened to make sure she wasn’t coming up the stairs and had a poke through the underwear drawers but got nothing except a vague sense of being really unprofessional.
I ended up learning magic because you can’t trust the British to keep to an agreement over the long term.
I don’t like my bacon sandwich to be curiously snuffling at my fingers. But sometimes being police means holding your breath and fondling a pig.
I didn’t tell him that it was all stored as binary information on rapidly spinning shiny discs, partly because I’d have to look up the details myself, but mostly because by the time he’d understood th...
Given that all three of us were Londoners, we paused a moment to carry out the ritual of the valuation of the property. I guessed that, given the area, it was at least a million and change. Million an...
Fish and chip night was a Kumar family tradition that dated back to when Jaget was courting his wife and they used to meet in the last white English-owned fish and chip shop in Wembley on the basis th...
Ever since mankind stopped wandering around aimlessly and started cultivating its own food, society has been growing more complex. As soon as we stopped sleeping with our cousins and built walls, temp...
Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, I thought. For they are soggy and hard to light.
Dedication This book is dedicated to Sir Terry Pratchett OBE who has stood like a wossname upon the rocky shores of our imaginations – the better to guide us safely into harbour.
But as the wise man said, life’s too short to drink bad wine. Regret is a terrible vintage.
Boss, I said into my Airwave. It’s getting needlessly metaphysical out here. Ignore
Because who is more oppressed, exclaimed Leslie. Those that seek nothing but entitlements for themselves or those that claim for everything, social security, housing benefit, disability and pay for no...
Asbo
As Martin noted, to the detectives conducting his interview, it was a good thing he'd been inebriated, because otherwise he would have wasted time screaming and running about - especially once he real...
As Conan the Barbarian famously said, That which does not kill us does not kill us.
Are they really gods?I never worry about theological questions, said Nightingale. They exist, they have power and they can breach the Queen's peace - that makes them a police matter.