Whispers Under Ground timeline

Imported from tumblr.

This one is cheating a bit because the days are labeled in the book, but I think it’s still helpful. (Foxglove Summer will be easy, Rivers of London and Broken Homes difficult because they both cover several months.) I plan to do these for all the books, and then integrate them into a during-the-series-timeline - I find it hard sometimes to keep track of how long Peter has been an apprentice, how long it’s been since Lesley was injured, etcetera. (For those keeping score: Peter has been an apprentice for a year and a half as of Foxglove Summer! Which is presumably why he’s getting pretty damn competent at a lot of the basic formae.)

( The timeline )

Thoughts:

- Wow, this is really the book for introductions! We meet some key players going forward, including but not limited to Zach, Kumar, Varvara, Effra, and Oberon, and get re-introduced to Abigail and Guleed.

- I think in retrospect Nightingale’s “have to stay with Molly” excuse was just a kind way to get Peter off to his family party while he did work; he, Peter and Lesley were all in the Folly with her until “late morning” when Lesley was picked up by her sister, and he can’t have spent much time there if he then went and interrupted the Beale family dinner, went over all the plans, and arranged for a full TSG-equipped raid the next day.

- Do we think Nightingale gave Lesley anything for Christmas, or vice-versa? The way it’s written it’s implied not (Lesley leaves -> presents are exchanged.) She can’t have been at the Folly for more than nine weeks at this point; she demonstrates the werelight mid-October, this is late December.

- This is a really fast murder investigation; they wrap it up in under a week. And Peter solves it largely by doing basic police work (interviewing witnesses, looking for clues at the crime scene/suspect’s house, and then putting the two together.) The magic stuff is in some ways peripheral to the actual crime, it’s only magical insomuch as the principals were people connected to magic.

- Nightingale’s attention is 100% on the Faceless Man issue for the entire book, Peter’s largely running the Underground case on his own until he calls Nightingale in for things (the sewers & visit to the Quiet People.) Which is probably as it should be.

- An addition to Chekhov’s Armoury: the car trackers Reynolds gives Peter at the end of the book. We haven’t seen him use them yet…that he’s mentioned.