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sixthlight) wrote2017-02-25 05:33 pm
The Hanging Tree timeline
The big question here is: when does this book take place? Unlike every other book in the series so far, Peter never gives us a date, a month, or even a season to go by.
- It’s been roughly two years since the events of Whispers Under Ground, which happened from December 18-27th, 2012
or maybe 2011 since 2012 didn’t happen - It’s after February 2014, as George Thames-McAllister’s car was registered between September 2013 and February 2014
- Peter’s dad’s gig is raising money for the Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone; the first recorded cases of Ebola in that country were in May 2014 and it hit epidemic stage in September
- School and university are in for Beverley and Olivia, so it’s September or later
- Peter comments “most of the leaves were still on the trees”, so it must be the second half of the year rather than the first
- The sun is only starting to set in the early evening (“two hours after the school rush”), so it can’t be later than late October (when the clocks go back).
- All of which adds up to…well, your guess is as good as mine, but somewhere in September-October 2014, almost exactly two years after Moon Over Soho. The book takes place over two weeks, so it starts no later than mid-October. I’m going to say the first two weeks of October, as an approximation.
- Which means we have a whopping fourteen-month gap between Foxglove Summer and this book – so much for Lesley’s mysterious one-year deadline, which came and went before this book even starts!
Day 0 (Sunday): Olivia McAllister-Thames, Phoebe Beaumont-Jones, Christina Chorley, and friends have a party at One Hyde Park. Christina takes MDMA, suffers seizures, and dies.
Day 1 (Monday): Peter is woken at five a.m. by a phone call from Lady Ty. He goes to investigate the death, and then to interview Ty’s daughter Olivia, along with Sahra Guleed. Olivia confesses to buying the drugs and is arrested. She is interviewed by Nightingale and Stephanopoulos for about three hours. Guleed and Peter go to talk to Walid and his new pathologist colleague Dr Jennifer Vaughan about Christina Chorley’s autopsy.
Stephanopoulos clears Peter and Guleed to interview her father, Martin Chorley. Chorley is at work and says Christina had been staying in London over the weekend, so it’s probably Monday. Peter reports back and then goes to his father’s gig at the Bull’s Head, where he meets up with Beverley and the Irregulars. Reynard Fossman contacts Peter and tells him he has Jonathan Wild’s ledger. Peter and Beverley race home, Beverley via the river and Peter in his car.
Day 2(Tuesday): Peter has a 7am meeting at Belgravia to help interview Albertina Pryce, one of the teenagers at the party, whose father is possible Little Crocodile Albert Pryce. She tells Peter Christina wasn’t staying with her and was dating a man called Reynard. Peter, Nightingale, Seawoll, and Stephanopoulos discuss who – and what – Reynard might be. Peter sets up a meeting with him at ten am the next day. Peter and Nightingale spend the afternoon working out the logistics of the meeting, and Peter ends up staying at the Folly overnight for magic practice and Latin translation.
Day 3(Wednesday): Peter meets Reynard at Harrods. They are interrupted by Lesley May, with her old face back. Peter and Lesley have a magical duel which is interrupted in turn by an American with a gun, trying to get to Reynard, and a third, unknown practitioner. The American is knocked out by Lesley and arrested but Reynard and Lesley both escape. Nightingale arrests the third practitioner – Lady Caroline Elizabeth Louise Linden-Limmer, and they take her to Belgravia. DI Pollock, responsible for chasing Lesley, interviews Peter there about Lesley’s appearance in Harrods. Mid-afternoon, Peter interviews Caroline’s mother Lady Helena, who turns out to be a practitioner from a women’s tradition. Nightingale decides to invite her and Caroline round for tea at the Folly the next day. Peter recieves a call from Special Agent Kimberley Reynolds.
Day 4(Thursday): Peter runs to Belgravia from the Folly and gets a call from Beverley on the way. At Belgravia, Guleed informs him the flat Christina Chorley died in can be linked to County Gard – a front organisation for the Faceless Man. That afternoon, Lady Helena and Caroline come to the Folly for tea. Peter shows Caroline around the Folly and they discuss magic and experiments. Peter returns to Belgravia and discovers they may have found the dealer who sold the drugs that killed Christina Chorley, in Bromley.
Day 5(Friday): Peter goes to Bromley to interview Aiden Burghley, the drug dealer. He then has lunch with Beverley at the Green Bridge and asks her to arrange a meeting between him, Ty, and Olivia. Peter stops by Belgravia again, then goes to the meeting, where Olivia confesses she was with her friend Phoebe Beaumont-Jones when she bought the drugs, and was lying to protect her because they’re dating.
On the way to interview Phoebe, Nightingale calls Peter to say Lady Helena has tracked down Reynard. Nightingale, Lady Helena, Caroline, and Peter arrest him at a pub. Nightingale takes him to Belgravia and Peter rejoins Guleed at Phoebe’s house “a couple of hours after the school rush”, where he finds Phoebe being threatened by more American agents. He persuades them to let her go, then he and the Americans are nearly drowned in the basement by an unknown force. Their leader dies and the rest are arrested. Peter interviews Phoebe, who describes an encounter with the Faceless Man. She says she thinks he was the parent of someone she went to school with.
Day 6(Saturday): Phoebe was arrested on Friday night, but is released Saturday afternoon as the drug dealer – Aiden Burghley – has gone missing and cannot identify her. Peter spends a lot of time looking over pictures and doing magic practice.
Day 7(Sunday): The lead American’s body is recovered from Phoebe’s house. Peter and Beverley have a bath and discuss Tyburn’s feelings about her daughter’s arrest and whether she tried to drown Peter and the Americans.
Day 8(Monday): Peter, Nightingale, Seawoll, Stephanopoulos, and DAC Folsom meet to discuss the hunt for the Faceless Man. Afterwards, Peter and Nightingale meet with two representatives of MI5.
Peter and Nightingale return to Belgravia, and then go to interview Albert Price, father of Albertina. They only find Albertina, who says her father left town on Friday morning. They are then called by Bromley to say Aiden Burghley’s body has been found. They realise it may be a distraction and race back to Belgravia to check on Reynard. Kimberley Reynolds calls Peter and asks to meet up. She’s there to have the other Americans repatriated. Nightingale stays at Belgravia and Peter goes back to the Folly.
Day 9(Tuesday): Peter re-interviews Reynard. He admits to having been in a relationship with Christina Chorley, who he met at a demi-monde pub called The Chestnut Tree. Nightingale and Guleed interview Phoebe and her father. Peter and Guleed go to The Chestnut Tree to talk to the manager, and after finding out the pub is owned by a company linked to the Faceless Man, discover a cache of magic-related books and items in the basement.
Peter and Guleed are sent out to the Chorley house in High Wycombe, outside London. They find Caroline at the Folly, and decide to take her along. They send her to the pub while they interview Martin Chorley, who is the Faceless Man. Peter makes a narrow escape and he and Guleed are rescued by Caroline, who can fly. Nightingale arrives and tells Peter he’s lost track of Reynard. Nightingale stays at the house, Caroline leaves with her mother, and Peter and Guleed go back to London.
Day 10(Wednesday): Peter is woken by the news Martin Chorley tried to kill Phoebe and Olivia at Tyburn’s house the evening before. Peter hunts down Zachary Palmer and asks him about Reynard. Peter and Nightingale find him meeting with Lady Helena and Caroline. Peter follows the three of them and has a run-in with Lesley, as well as the ghost of the first Tyburn, along the way.
He, Nightingale, and Guleed end up pursuing Reynard, Lady Helena, and Caroline into One Hyde Park, where Tyburn is also trying to kill Martin Chorley. There’s a complex fight. Tyburn mind-controls the Americans, Reynard is arrested, Chorley and Lesley escape, and Lady Helena and Caroline abscond with the Third Principia. Guleed and Peter go to hospital for smoke inhalation, then Peter goes home with Beverley.
Day 11(Thursday): Nightingale picks Peter up from Bev’s and takes him to Belgravia, so Nightingale can go home and sleep. Reynard has been arrested again, as has the second American team. Nightingale explains Chorley had booby-trapped his flat, which was how he escaped. He declines to have Lady Helena arrested.
Days 12-15?(Friday-Monday?): Reynard is charged with some offences, but released to serve as bait. Peter helps out Beverley by installing baffles in her river. Ty asks to meet with him and tells him he needs to break up with Beverley eventually, because she’s immortal and Peter isn’t. Kimberley Reynolds escorts the Americans home. Peter goes to London Bridge early one morning to have a word with Mr Punch, who he suspects is still somehow linked to Lesley.
Take-aways: I was expecting this to maybe be a book that covered a longer stretch of time, in the style of RoL and BH, but instead it’s another two-week case (MoS, WUG, and FS all also cover approximately two weeks of book time) with a whopping long between-book gap to inch us that much closer to the present day (and make room for Night Witch, Black Mould, and the forthcoming The Furthest Station). My best guess for dates is October 5th through October 16th for the main action, but it could honestly start anywhere between September 7th and October 12th. We seem to have traded certainty about the year (2014) for total uncertainty about the actual date.