False Value
Ben Aaronovitch, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith (narrator)
We ended Lies Sleeping with Leslie offing Martin Chorley (AKA the Faceless Man) in Peter's presence. To be precise, that was almost the end of Lies Sleeping. The final thing that happened in Lies Sleeping was Beverley Brook informing Peter that she is pregnant. This is, long-term, a somewhat ominous development, as Lady Ty took Peter aside for "The Talk" -- this is the talk that happens when a mortal and an immortal goddess enter into a long-term relationship. Ty was all, "This will not end well, Peter", but we should take that with a grain of salt, since it doesn't seem to have stopped Lady Ty from entering into long-term relationships with mortals.
So, we have consequences. Peter has been suspended pending an investigation. (Note: a suspect being gunned down in the presence of a police officer is a much bigger deal in the UK than in the USA. It's not exactly a "Heads will roll" situation, but it is definitely a "Heads will feel wobbly" one.) Also, Bev is now several months pregnant, with twins, as it happens. Bev and Peter's unborn children are a character in False Value, known as "The Bulge".
The London police have become suspicious of one Terrence Skinner, an Australian-via-USA tech entrepreneur who runs a big corporation in London. Because there may be Falcon-related matters, Peter is tapped to serve as an undercover investigator. His suspension serves as a useful pretext. He is no longer employed as a policeman and thus apparently needs a job. Furthermore, he has a plausible grievance against the police. So Peter gets hired as a security officer by Skinner's firm.
Skinner's firm is called the Serious Cybernetics Company. When I first read that in the publisher's blurb, I thought, "Aha! This is a subtle allusion to Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." I was wrong about that. The allusion is as subtle as a two-by-four to the head. Everything in the Serious Cybernetics Company is named after something from THHGTG. For instance, the security department Peter joined is called the "Vogon Enforcement Arm", and Peter's job title is "Vogon".
The entire novel is a pander to a certain type of reader: the tech-obsessed THHGTG uber-fan. It is full of stuff about punch-card driven looms and organs, allusions to Alan Turing, Charles Babbage, and Ada Lovelace, etc. I am very much a charter member of the pander-targeted demo, so you might think I would love this. I am sad to say it didn't quite work for me. The pander was too blatant, and its general use to introduce deos-ex-machina in place of an actual plot that made sense was disappointing.
But it was still fun, with Peter's usual enjoyable snark. Also, there's some interesting world-building. We are introduced to new ideas about where magic comes from and to new practitioners. So, I can still see my way to a four-star rating.
Review of audiobook:
Q&A with Ben and Kobna
Americans are almost totally absent from False Value -- Kim Reynolds makes brief appearances -- and thus Kobna, who always does an excellent job as long as he doesn't have to portray any Americans, does an excellent job. For the novel itself, I didn't feel the the audio version added a lot of value. However, the audiobook ends with a half-hour Q&A with Ben and Kobna, and that was fun.
The main lesson I got out of that is that Ben and Kobna know each other and pay each other attention. For instance, as he writes Ben, in order to keep the continuity consistent, frequently goes back and listens to the novels. A lot of the questions are of the form "Does Kobna's performance surprise you, Ben?", "Does Ben's story surprise you, Kobna?" The answers (spoiler alert!) are "Yes" and "Yes". But of course the specifics of what surprises are more interesting than the up-or-down answer.