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    The Severed Streets
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    The Severed Streets
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    The Severed Streets
    Ebook494 pages8 hours

    The Severed Streets

    By Paul Cornell

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Desperate to find a case to justify the team's existence, with budget cuts and a police strike on the horizon, Quill thinks he's struck gold when a cabinet minister is murdered by an assailant who wasn't seen getting in or out of his limo. A second murder, that of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, presents a crime scene with a message...identical to that left by the original Jack the Ripper.

    The new Ripper seems to have changed the MO of the old completely: he's only killing rich white men. The inquiry into just what this supernatural menace is takes Quill and his team into the corridors of power at Whitehall, to meetings with MI5, or 'the funny people' as the Met call them, and into the London occult underworld. They go undercover to a pub with a regular evening that caters to that clientele, and to an auction of objects of power at the Tate Modern.

    Meanwhile, in Paul Cornell's The Severed Streets, the Ripper keeps on killing and finally the pattern of those killings gives Quill's team clues towards who's really doing this....

    At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateMay 20, 2014
    ISBN9781429943857
    Unavailable
    The Severed Streets
    Author

    Paul Cornell

    Paul Cornell has written some of Doctor Who's best-loved episodes for the BBC, as well as an episode of the hit Sherlock Holmes drama, Elementary. He has also written on a number of comic book series for Marvel and DC, including X-Men and Batman and Robin. He has been Hugo Award-nominated for his work in TV, comics and prose, and won the BSFA award for his short fiction. His urban gothic mystery series, Shadow Police, includes London Falling, The Severed Streets and Who Killed Sherlock Holmes?.

    Read more from Paul Cornell

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    Reviews for The Severed Streets

    4/5

    21 ratings16 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this a lot - Neil Gaiman! the Blue Peter Garden!
    • 3/5
      This is the second book in this series - but I found it a bit disjointed, going off in odd directions that seem.... well odd.I'm not sure how else to explain it - the story made sense, the characters were mostly the same, but, everything felt disjointed, desperate, as if the action created the story, rather than a more organic approach that happened in the first book. I also didn't like where the book went, it felt too contrived.However, I'll continue reading the series, because the premise is very interesting, and I liked the first book.
    • 4/5
      Amazing work, although it's definitely a second book in a series. While not impossible, 89% of the nuance and context of the characters grew from that book and their initial encounters with the supernatural. Thus, I recommend you read Paul Cornell's London Falling first.

      That said, this book took unexpected twists and turns both in the 2nd and 3rd acts that surprised this long-time reader of fantasy, so that alone was worth the price of admission for me.

      Also, as a long-time fan of Neil Gaiman the author, seeing him as a secondary character herein was amusing to fascinating to....well, to say more ruins some very fun reading. Go do so. NOW.
    • 5/5
      I enjoyed "London Falling" and looked forward to reading the sequel "The Severed Streets". I was quite happy to find the sequel was equal if not slightly better than the first book. I think I like "The Severed Streets" slightly better because I was already familiar with the characters, cared about what happened to them and found the adversary much harder to predict. Great books have at least one line that makes you stop, come to a full stop, and consider what you just read. In this book it was, "To Londoners, bombs and riots were just an extreme form of weather." What an excellent image it gives me of the spirit of the people who live there. Read "London Falling" and then jump right into "The Severed Streets". I hope there is another book in the series coming soon.
    • 4/5
      This is a terrific series.
    • 2/5
      London is in turmoil: mobs are patrolling the streets, and an MP is somehow brutally murdered in his car, surrounded by furious protesters, with the CCTV cameras showing that no one entered or left the car in which he was being driven home – at least no one visible to the general public or the ordinary police – and now the Shadow Police under Detective Inspector James Quill have a new case. Very soon further gruesome killings of rich white men follow, and the team have to use all their resources to find the culprit behind the killings while trying to stay alive ...I had high hopes for this series after reading London Falling last year, with its combination of ordinary police procedural and urban fantasy elements, but I have to say this novel fell entirely flat of my expectations. Despite two gruesome murders being committed within the first 50 pages, I found the plot boring, the off-the-wall fantasy components silly and difficult to swallow, and the narrative and characters hard to engage with; occasionally I also had problems simply understanding what an individual character was talking about as (1) the syntax didn't make much sense and (2) certain key moments from the first volume were referenced, but the author didn't provide an explanation and it's taken for granted that readers will be familiar with events and terms. Once past page 100 the pace appeared to pick up a little but by then I had lost complete interest and gave up on page 126. It's possible that the novel improves in the second half of the book, but I doubt it. I don't think I'll continue with the series.
    • 4/5
      With Mora Losley dead and the Smiling Man nowhere to be seen, our favorite team of policemen are learning to survive while being able to see the darker corners of London. And just when they start wondering when they will find a new case that will allow the unit to keep existing. And the case finds them - a man is dead and there is no way it happened in any natural way - eviscerated on the back seat of a car with only his driver presented. And the chase is back on. It was inevitable that Cornell will tackle the Jack the Ripper story - a series set in London and dealing with things that had existed for a while just cannot skip that topic. Most of the authors would have gone for the easy options - the topic lends itself to enough interpretations. Cornell ends up naming Jack but by the time it happens, we do not really care - it is irrelevant to this story. Jack is a center figure and at the same time just a side character. And the whole story is upside down - from the victims being all male and mostly affluent to the killer being a ghost (or something). By the end a lot of people will end up dead, something very old will be discovered again and Neil Gaiman will become a side character, rooting the story in the now and here and making so many small connections between imagination and reality. It could have been anyone but just the name of Gaiman is bringing thoughts of impossibility and danger ("Neverwhere" is not just mentioned but also referenced). It was a nice idea and I loved the execution of it - it is subtle and even though we see him only a few times, he feels real. One of the biggest issues in the contemporary fantasy (and comics) is that noone stays dead. And usually there isn't enough back history to allow you to see the dead man coming back. Cornell does the opposite - by the time we have a dead body we care about, it is well established that there is a way to get someone back - only once a century. It is a nice setup (and way too many people end up needing it) and it works at the end - both because we really do not know what will be done (although it is not so hard to guess) and because we are know that someone will turn up alive. The first novel was paced a lot better than this one - the last chapters here are deliberately slowed down with time jumps in all directions in an attempt to keep the story surprising to the end. But combined with a man outside of the normal world and it sounds in places as a way to go around tying up loose ends - so much easier for someone to just feed the information to someone than someone to discover it. Cornell's London is still fascinating and I will love to return to it - for the city, for the team that found themselves changed by thee end of the novel, for the Smiling Man. And I cannot stop wondering of the ultimate villain's profession here was not a commentary on our world. All of the dead men professions as well come to think of it.
    • 2/5
      The four Sighted police officers of London are faced with another case only they can solve: Jack the Ripper is back, and he's killing rich white guys this time.

      In the last book, the writing and pacing were plodding until about halfway through, when the book switched into high gear and became clever and enjoyable. Sadly, this book is a return to the plodding. There's something about the characters' inner monologues that feels both realistic and deeply annoying and boring. And then it all ends with the bad guy literally monologuing about How He Did It for several pages. Bah!

      I was also annoyed by the Gaiman subplot. The cops see Neil Gaiman hanging out at a magic bar and realize he's part of magical London. Cute, I thought. But then he becomes a minor character! That's creepy enough, but it's not even well done--he doesn't talk or act anything like Gaiman does in his numerous public appearances or on his blog, and his writing never comes up. He's completely generic. If you're going to turn a real person into a fictional bad guy, you'd better have a reason for it, and keep that person consistent with what we know about them. Otherwise, just make someone up!

      All that said, I do like some of Cornell's ideas about where magic comes from and the sacrifices necessary to use it. Just once I'd like the Sight or magic to be kinda nice, though. Thus far it's been wholly grim and dark and horrible. Surely EVERYTHING magical isn't awful, right?
    • 4/5
      Starts really well, and is definitely not just a 2nd book of a trilogy feeling. A very well crafted recap section for those of us who hadn't quite remembered the previous book, before moving onto the main plot proper. This is very obviously based on the London riots of 2011 or so, and as such already begins to feel dated. However it is only loosely based on such, otherwise Neil would be suing for slander! Instead of which he is properly acknowledged in the afterword. I do wonder Paul as a debuet author managed to attract that much of Neil's time! Sadly the latter quarter of the book uses a very jumpy bit of time hopping purely as an authorial device to attempt to preserve the reader's suspense. This doesn't really work very well because it's so out of keeping with the rest of the book that it just break's the suspension of disbelief instead. I might have accepted it once, but repeatedly it just becomes annoying. There are much better ways to write.Quill and his small team start out investigating the murder of a prominent Cabinet member - safely locked in his car even though surrounded by protesters. Those with the Sight can see something very odd happening, TBC
    • 4/5
      Now that they've met Neil Gaiman, and had him as a minor character, maybe they should also bump into Constantine or Harry Dresden...Our four sighted policemen have to deal with the aftermath of what has happened and what they know. Their lives have become complicated by their dealings with the occult and they have all had to make life changes. Now they're faced with a ripper-like murderer who is killing rich white men. In order to investigate they need to find out more about the occult and the occult community, and while there find Neil Gaiman who helps, but has an agenda. Things will never be the same again.I liked it, sometimes it didn't flow as well as I might have liked but it kept me reading. I like how the characters are learning and developing and getting used to their new world. The rioting and motive of the bad guy were understandable and none of the older characters were obviously good or bad, they just are, the sacrifices are interesting and real, a sacrifice isn't real if you're not giving up something that means something to you.
    • 4/5
      second volume of the Shadow Police series about occult detectives on the Metropolitan London police force. the first volume, London Falling, should be read first. there are still what seems to me large holes in the plot and the narration, so a fair bit of suspension of disbelief is required, but all the piled-up colourful detail kind of makes up for that, and everything builds nicely. a fictionalized Neil Gaiman is also a character (not sure what i think of that, given his role, but it's certainly interesting). London itself is a hugely central character, there's a new Ripper in the City, riots get in the way (but don't deter the tourists), and Hell doesn't quite freeze over (but it's a great setting for it). it's quite fascinating to see the very small team with the Sight apply police detection methods to horror fiction problems, and it's certainly a treat to see urban fantasy take such an unexpected turn.
    • 4/5
      I'm going to have to concur with some of the other reviewers that this second installment of London investigative police fighting occult powers while using Second Sight themselves is not quite as involving as the initial novel. However, I do give Cornell points for being willing to get to grips with political corruption as a theme, the set pieces are well done and he has one hell of a "Tuckerization" to move the plot along.
    • 4/5
      A found it a bit hard to get into but once I did I was drawn into a fascinating urban fantasy/supernatural murder mystery. It's not a fast read. There's a lot of things to take in, but I find this series so different and so rich and deep that I can't help looking forward to the next book in the series. This one delivered some major shocks that had my mouth falling open, but I don't want to spoil anyone's read by saying much more than that. Kept me guessing.
    • 5/5
      This sequel to London Falling finds our quartet of police officers newly awakened to the supernatural investigating a series of horrific murders carried out in the persona of Jack the Ripper, against the background of an Occupy-like unrest in London and an impending police strike. Two of the protagonists were also busy trying to stay out of Hell/get a parent out of Hell. Neil Gaiman shows up, playing a role I thought too clever by half. I sensed Cornell’s TV background in the late-in-the-book adoption of flashbacks as a device to increase suspense. However, these are overall minor quibbles given the otherwise intriguing story, which managed to maintain a sense of dread while adding worldbuilding details as the protagonists learned more about magic at a pace that kept the reader’s frustration in line with their own—they needed to learn more, but that’s what investigation is about. This isn’t a happy book, but I found it satisfying, not least because the protagonists—especially their leader Quinn—had the exact feeling of duty to law and order that I appreciate, much like Sam Vimes (without the surrounding optimism).
    • 3/5
      2nd in this intriguing Urban fantasy meets Police proceduralHighly topical (not just to the UK), burrowing into our deep malaise against the political classes and unrest at the 1%. For London is seeing growing protests and sporadic riots, the police are stretched to breaking point, the far right is rising and the coalition government finally losing its head and barking out insane orders. Into the chaos come a series of the brutal murders of rich white men, a politician 1st, a police chief next. All torn apart with a sharp blade and screaming The Ripper named by a press dirtied by the hacking scandal and desperate for diversion. London is at breaking point and this impossible killer must be stopped before it all tips over the brinkThe open chapter is hugely gripping, snatches of reports of riots laid against political corruption and all rising to culmination of murder. It sets the scene perfectly but I wanted this break necked pace kept up and sadly a pause has to be given eventually. This is in the form of deftly reminding one of the intriguing world and the characters. Still the pacing doesn’t recover as they prepare for an undercover op and certain late events brought forward could have really heightened the tension for me whilst I wanted sudden reveals to be played better (although maybe I wasn’t paying attention). I have to admit I loved the 1st but series fatigue has set in early and my mind wandered. Perhaps too the newness of the world has gone and it’s highlighted that the characters never really gripped me. The young analyst driven by the murder of her father, the 2 under cover policemen 1 seeking redemption for immoral actions and one (the plot guy) who seems to have found his calling of the occult. All overseen by( XX need to check!). None of them really speak to me, refreshing as it is to have 2 blacks guys, 1 homosexual and 1 main female character! (ok so that last bit isn’t refreshing). It’s a shame really, I love the mix of fantasy and the dogged actions of police procedural to ground it. I loved the idea of Hell. I cheered at the Blue Peter garden visit (iconic children’s TV show non Uk people). But then again I am not a huge fan of the sacrifice for power thing and weirdly the London centric tenet is grating. Oh look London is rioting … everyone else in the UK looks bemused. Recommended? Well go read the brilliant 1st one and then try this. Nearly everyone I know enjoyed it and I do get grumpy fast so who knows.
    • 4/5
      While The Severed Streets may not meet the mark of it’s predecessor, London Falling, it’s still an enjoyable and addicting story.If you aren’t already familiar with London Falling, you should be sure to read it first so you aren’t entering the series midway. The basic premise is of four London police officers who gain the Sight, the ability to see the paranormal side of the city all around them. Basically, the series is urban fantasy with a police procedural bent that occasionally crosses into horror or mystery. The results are fantastic.The four police officers introduced in the prior book continue to be the main characters in The Severed Streets: Quill, the detective inspector who’s struggling with his marriage and depression; Ross, the young intelligence officer who’s got great determination and deep secrets; Costain, a drug addicted undercover agent, who, due to the turn of events, fears he’ll go to Hell; and Sefton, the undercover agent who stays true to his beliefs (well, lack there of) and delves into researching this other side of London.What was interesting in London Falling was how each character reacted to gaining the Sight. In some ways, that holds true for The Severed Streets, but at this point they’re figured more out, although there’s still a lot left that they don’t know. As such, they are mainly over the shock of the first book and have an easier time of it figuring out a procedure in the midst of chaos, which was probably why I found this book less satisfying than the last.I also appreciate the diversity of characters – Quill’s the only straight white guy among the main cast. Costain and Sefton are both black, which is reflected upon in the text – Sefton in particular relates it to his feelings of being out of place, although part of that is also that he’s gay (he has a relationship in both books). While Ross is the only woman among the main four, there’s also Lofthouse, who takes on a greater role in The Severed Streets. That being said, I would still have liked to see more of her and to find out the secrets that she won’t tell the others.The plot of The Severed Streets initially relates to the Jack the Ripper killings. While that angle loses importance near the end, it was still prominent in most of the book. I wasn’t fond of it – Jack the Ripper related plots have been done so many times that it’s hard for me to feel like I’m reading something original.Despite my quibbles with the plot line, the pacing was spot on. I stayed up much latter than I intended reading this one.The most surprising aspect of The Severed Streets was the addition of a real life author as a character (written with permission from the author in question). I was not expecting it in the least and found the initial scene hilariously funny. I was more uncertain latter on – I wasn’t expecting the extent to which the author was used. Note that I’m refraining from telling who the appearing author is. It’s more fun if you discover it for yourself.In the end, The Severed Streets might not be as good as the first, but it’s still a wonderful book. I’d recommend the Shadow Police series to anyone who’s likes urban fantasy or to anyone who likes more regular police procedural and detective stories and is liking to give another genre a try.