Ben Aaronovitch Quotes
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...don't ask me why I know what an Edwardian smoking jacket looks like: let's just say it has something to do with Doctor Who and leave it at that.
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Murder investigations start with the victim, because usually in the first instance that's all you've got. The study of the victim is called victimology because everything sounds better with an 'ology' tacked on the end. To make sure you make a proper fist of this, the police have developed the world's most useless mnemonic - 5 x W H & H - otherwise known as Who? What? Where? When? Why? and How? Next time you watch a real murder investigation on the TV, and you see a group of serious-looking detectives standing around talking, remember that what they're actually doing is trying to work out what sodding order the mnemonic is supposed to go in. Once they've sorted that out, the exhausted officers will retire to the nearest watering hole for a drink and a bit of a breather.
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The evening was still warm enough for shirtsleeves, and the city was clinging to summer like a wannabe trophy wife to a promising center forward.
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We'd considered wearing uniform but Lesley said, what with her mask and everything, she'd look like a plastic cop monster from Doctor Who. I managed to restrain myself from telling her their real name.
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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 – I was just looking to ascertain the whereabouts of the proprietor when I stumbled across the Class A controlled substances which were in plain sight in the bottom drawer of a locked desk in an upstairs office, M’lord.
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It was chintz but not the cat-lady chintz I was used to. Perhaps it was Mrs. Bellrush’s manner or steely blue eyes but I got the distinct impression that this was aggressive chintz, warrior chintz, the kind of chintz that had gone out to conquer an Empire and still had the good taste to dress for dinner. Any IKEA flat-pack that showed its face around here was going to be kindling.
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A major investigation, once it gets underway, is as exciting as watching reruns of Big Brother, although possibly involving less sex and violence.
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You never said you used to play Dungeon and Dragons. I’d been tempted to tell her that I was thirteen at the time, and anyway it was Call of Cthulhu, but I’ve learned from bitter experience that such remarks generally only make things worse.
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I offered her the flowers, which she took with a delightful laugh. She pulled my head down and kissed me on the cheek. She smelled of cigars and new car seats, horses and furniture polish, Stilton, Belgian chocolate and, behind it all, the hemp and the crowd and the last drop into oblivion.
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The problem with the so-called bloody surveillance state is that it’s hard work trying to track someone’s movements using CCTV – especially if they’re on foot. Part of the problem is that the cameras all belong to different people for different reasons. Westminster Council has a network for traffic violations, the Oxford Street Trading Association has a huge network aimed at shop-lifters and pickpockets, individual shops have their own systems, as do pubs, clubs and buses. When you walk around London it is important to remember that Big Brother may be watching you, or he could be having a piss, or reading the paper or helping redirect traffic around a car accident or maybe he’s just forgotten to turn the bloody thing on.
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She had a narrow face which could fall into an expression of belligerent suspicion of such power that her teachers said they could feel it even when they were hiding in the staff room. It was her stubbornness, coupled with this expression – and routine everyday low grade racism – that kept her constantly on the verge of a school suspension.
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If you ask any police officer what the worst part of the job is, they will always say breaking bad news to relatives, but this is not the truth. The worst part is staying in the room after you've broken the news, so that you're forced to be there when someone's life disintegrates around them. Some people say it doesn't bother them - such people are not to be trusted.
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With a grunt he levered himself to his feet, causing the chair to bang against the bookcase behind him and set the various objet d’bollocks rattling.
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Whatever you see, he’d said, take as long a look as you need to get used to it, to accept it, and then move on as if nothing has changed.
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He was transparent, the way holograms in films are transparent.Three dimensional, definitely really there and fucking...transparent.
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I think becoming a wizard is about discovering what's real and what isn't.
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Class-war evil supernatural black fungus. I love it.
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Before London swallowed it whole, Camden Town was the fork in the road best known for a coaching inn called the Mother Red Cap. It served as a last-chance stop for beer, highway robbery and gonorrhoea before heading north into the wilds of Middlesex.
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This is your brain on magic.
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Taking a statement from anyone can be a long process on account of the fact that your average member of the public wouldn’t know the truth if it donned a pink tutu and danced in front of them singing the Chicken Song.
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He was one of those people who constantly seems to be having a conversation with someone other than the person he’s actually talking to—presumably someone much more politically committed. And interested.
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There’s more to life than just London,’ said Nightingale. ‘People keep saying that,’ I said. ‘But I’ve never actually seen any proof.
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Carved above the lintel were the words SCIENTIA POTESTAS EST. Science points east, I wondered? Science is portentous, yes? Science protests too much. Scientific potatoes rule. Had I stumbled on the lair of dangerous plant geneticists?
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Most people don't see half of what's in front of them. Your visual cortex does a shit load of imaging processing before the signal even gets to your brain, whose priorities are still checking the ancestral Savannah for dangerous predators, edible berries and climable trees. That's why a sudden cat in the night can make you jump and some people when distracted, can walk right out in front of a bus. Your brain just isn't interested in those large moving chunks of metal or the static heaps of brightly colored stuff that piles up in drifts around us. Never mind all that, says your brain, it's those silent fur-covered merchants of death you've got to watch out for.