And Peter, increasingly friendly with his new co-workers and boss, knows that Johnson’s position allows him and his wife, Stacy, to provide for two foster children. He allows Stephen to assume that he too is a thief who wants the contents of Bambleweeny.īut as it happens, the police have also tracked Stephen to the Serious Cybernetics Corporation. Chin, with the intention of double-crossing them later. Peter decides to join forces with Stephen and his companion, Mrs. It wasn’t him who set the demon trap, Stephen tells Peter, but an unknown third party. He was able to disable it and sense a vestigium (magical signature) that is the mark of a powerful entity.Īfter Peter identifies Stephen, they meet at a pub to trade information.

Months earlier, when Peter and his fellow police officers searched Stephen’s flat, Peter stepped on a demon trap, a magical landmine. Stephen is a suspect in a police case that involves the theft of a program written by Ada Lovelace for a nineteenth-century computing device known as the mary engine. But when Peter identifies the would-be thief, Stephen Higgins, he realizes that and he and Stephen crossed paths months before. Johnson tasks Peter with figuring out who is behind the break-in attempts and why, a job made more difficult by Skinner’s refusal to disclose what work is done on Bambleweeny. No one knows what is housed there and an employee has been trying to break into it. Weirdest of all is the mystery surrounding a forbidden floor, Bambleweeny. The company employs a lot of nerds and has its quirks–floors with funny names, only in-house phones permitted on the premises, RPGs played while on break. SCC is run by one Terrence Skinner, an Australian (by way of Silicon Valley) tech billionaire. Johnson offers Peter a security position at Serious Cybernetics Corporation, a high-tech company. Peter is as vague as possible when he explains why, so as not to invoke the dreaded words, “special assessment unit,” (the police unit in charge of supernatural cases). Tyrel Johnson, his prospective boss, is ex-police and has heard that Peter was let go. The opening of False Value finds Peter interviewing for a new job, too. 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. I’ve enjoyed all but one of your books in the Rivers of London series, so I was happy to obtain an ARC of False Value, book number eight. Big events took place in Lies Sleeping that are mentioned in this review of False Value. PLEASE NOTE: If you haven’t read Lies Sleeping, the previous novel in the Rivers of London series, and wish to avoid spoilers for that book, skip this review.

Aaronovitch