Second paragraph of third chapter:
In the absence of coffee, I had a shower, and, by the time I was dressed, Dominic had texted me to say that he was on his way. The air was still fresh but the sun was already sucking up the moisture from the fields and you didn’t need to be chewing on a straw to know it was going to be another hot day.
I’ve read the previous installments of the Rivers of London series before and enjoyed them (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). In this volume, our protagonist, a London detective who has found himself sucked into magical investigations, is called to Herefordshire with his goddess girlfriend to investigate the disappearance of two girls. There’s lots of rural/urban tension, some glorious but not explicit erotic moments, and a look at how the boundary between our world and Faerie might manifest in the twenty-first century. There’s also a really good sense of place within Herefordshire’s geography. I think you could enjoy this book without having read the previous five books, but you’d enjoy it more if you had. You can get it here.
Not quite sure if this is a Bechdel pass. Plenty of women characters, who talk to each other a lot, but because the narrator is a man he is usually in the conversation too, or else being talked about. There’s a sequence at the top of page 117 where three goddesses are discussing mobile phone technology which possibly passes.
Next up: The Hanging Tree.
