This image starts to make sense in the later part of the book, but that's still not quiiiiiite how things went.
Author: Terry Pratchett
Publication: 2011
Genre: Fantasy
To explain why I loved this book I have to go way back to the early 2000s when I first discovered Terry Pratchett. My introduction was Night Watch. It’s not only one of the ‘Watch’ series-within-a-series of Pratchett books, but one intensely focused on Sam Vimes. Hence he’s always been a favorite character of mine. This is the last Watch book and one of the last novels Pratchett published before his death from Alzheimer’s in 2015, so it was a bittersweet read.
Summary: Ankh-Morpork City Watch Commander and reluctant Duke Sam Vimes is forced by his wife take a vacation at her estate in the country. Almost immediately he discovers a murder has occurred. What was that about a vacation, exactly?
My take: I was a bit annoyed on my reread of Night Watch last summer at Vimes’ qualities of smugly knowing what to do and magically always being three steps ahead of his adversary. Vimes hasn’t changed, but those qualities are deployed more satisfyingly here. They make sense for the older character, and Pratchett does a better job exposing Sam’s weaknesses and limitations. The last nearly 200 pages are a really fun ride, and I was sad to turn the last one. I wouldn’t recommend this as an introduction to Terry Pratchett- it’s probably best enjoyed after a few of the earlier Watch books. But as a conclusion (alas) to a long arc, it’s deeply satisfying.
Some miscellaneous complaints: Could Vimes shut up about about Sybil for eight seconds, honestly? The only other thing was that a lot of time is spent introducing the house and its servants at the beginning of the book, but as it never really led to anything later it came off as unneeded.
One final note: I didn’t buy this book back in February expecting for its content to be topical. But coincidentally I’ve seen this quote going around (page 244 of my paperback copy):
“It always embarrassed Samuel Vimes when civilians tried to speak to him in what they thought was “policeman.” If it came to that, he hated thinking of them as civilians. What was a policeman, if not a civilian with a uniform and a badge? But they tended to use the term these days as a way of describing people who were not policemen. It was a dangerous habit: once policemen stopped being civilians the only other thing they could be was soldiers.”
Snuff has a lot to say on the appropriate role of law enforcement, including a fair bit on the use of violence. Might be useful reading for some of America’s cops, and perhaps its politicians…