When dealing with the excessively rich and privileged, you’ve got your two basic approaches. One is to go in hard and deliberately working class. A regional accent is always a plus in this. Seawoll ha...
When I was a kid I used to drink from the tap all the time. I'd run back into the flat all hot and sweaty from playing and didn't even bother putting it in a glass, just turned the tap on and stuck my...
We can't have your people fighting each other, I said. The 'royal we' is very important in police work; it reminds the person you're talking to that behind you stands the mighty institution that is th...
Vikings, said Lesley. Precisely, said Nightingale. Bloodthirsty, but surprisingly erudite in a limited fashion. Well
Under the vaulted arch of its white iron-and-glass roof it was as if IKEA had been hired to refit St. Pancras station. If Thomas the Tank Engine had been Swedish, his living room would have looked jus...
Tolkien and my dad had weirdly convergent ideas about the musical nature of the universe, although my dad would probably have been more forgiving of Melkor’s improvisation. You know, providing it didn...
This is why magic is worse even than quantum physics. Because, while both spit in the eye of common sense, I’ve never yet had a Higgs bosun turn up and try to have a conversation with me.
There was also a great absence of people, including behind the mahogany-topped reception desk. Now, there’s a time when an unlocked premises is a positive boon to a police officer as in –
Then you throw the bloody thing as far as you can, hopefully outside the area of immediate magical effect, where two minutes later it basically phones the Met control room and screams help, help, seri...
Then he smiled at me and for that moment, and just that moment, I forgave him everything—everything—because now I knew what joy looked like and I was part of it.
The very rich, having fundamentally missed the point of urban living, have long been frustrated by the fact that it’s impossible to squeeze the amenities of a country mansion—car showroom, swimming po...
The night may be dark and full of terrors, I thought, but I’ve got a big stick. ‘Is
The Metropolitan Police Service is still, despite what people think, a working-class organisation and as such rejects totally the notion of an officer class. That is why every newly minted constable,...
That’s how real men settle their differences, through reasoned discussion and a dispassionate analysis. He farted as I reached the inner door, a sign, I decided, of his respect. Alexander
THE METROPOLITAN Police has a very straightforward approach to murder investigations. Not for them the detective’s gut instinct or the intricate logical deductions of the sleuth savant. No, what the M...
Sometimes I wonder whether, if I’d been the one that went for coffee and not Lesley May, my life would have been much less interesting and certainly much less dangerous. Could it have been anyone, or...
Somebody doesn't know they're not in Kansas anymore,' said Stephanopoulos.
Most people react this way when I tell them about the Nazis. Would it be more or less comforting if we could attribute that particular part of our history to the supernatural?
In 1666, following an unfortunate workplace accident, the city of London burnt down.
I, Anna Maria de Burgh Coppinger Isis solemnly swear on