Kim M. Watt

What's better than finding a new book series that you're excited to read? Finding two related book series that you're excited to read.

Recently, I had the good fortune to stumble across Kim Watt's books. I've read three of them in the past month and they all made me happy.

I started with 'Baking Bad' (2018), which is the first book in the Beaufort Scales series, described as 'cozy mystery (with dragons)' set in a small Yorkshire village and featuring the members of the local Women's Institute show more and Detective Inspector Adams, newly transplanted from London to Yorkshire and leading her first murder investigation.

Cozy mysteries are hit-or-miss things for me. I have to be able to connect with the people and the humour. 'Baking Bad' did both so I went in search of the next book in the series, 'Yule Be Sorry' (2018). While I was searching, I found 'What Happened In London' (2023), a prequel to the Beaufort Scales series, written to answer a question that had stuck in my mind when I finished 'Baking Bad' - What had happened to DI Adams in London that made her leave the prestige of The Met answer to take a post in Leeds?

I loved the answer. As soon as I read these opening paragraphs, I knew I had another series to follow:

"THE BIN WAS LOOKING AT HER WITH INTENT. WITH INTENT. THE BIN WAS LOOKING AT HER WITH INTENT, and she had no idea how she knew that, or how it was even possible (obviously it wasn’t), but that was the current situation.

Detective Sergeant Adams of the London Metropolitan Police had no time for problematic (and impossible) bins. She glared back at it, daring it to … she didn’t know. Bins were not something she’d considered a hazard before, other than in the olfactory sense, or as hiding places, but this one was different. Everything about it was just a little off. It was marginally too big, or too small. The colour was fractionally too intense, the familiar red on white of the logo too sharp, or the logo itself too big, or too small, or too something. And she could smell curry spices for some reason.

“No,” she muttered, and the world around her lurched, the yellow light stuttering. “No, what’s wrong with me? It’s just a bin.”

She looked away, peering deeper into the maze of slope-walled alleys, looking for her quarry. They had to be in here somewhere. She’d been right on their heels as they’d plunged off the street and into the dim-lit, secret ways that ran like veins just beyond the skin of London. They couldn’t have got far. She should’ve been able to see them, unless they’d hidden, but there were no turnings, no doorways, just⁠—

“You,” she said, and turned her gaze back to the bin. It seemed closer. “But I’d have heard the lid go,” she added, frowning, and was sure – sure – that said lid creaked just slightly upward in response. It almost looked smug. “It’s just a bin,” she muttered, and shifted her grip on her telescopic baton. “You’re just a bin.”

Now she was sure it looked smug, but she stepped forward anyway.

She wasn’t going to be beaten by a bin."

'What Happened In London' is darker, faster and harder-edged than the Beaufort Scales cozy mysteries. There are no dragons, no WI, no tea and cake, just bad things happening on the streets of London. Things that can't be understood unless you have the imagination and the courage to see things that shouldn't be there.

Adams, a black woman who has pushed her way through to the rank of Detective Sergeant in the Metropolitan Police by hard work and the relentless application of logic, is faced with a case where children are being abducted from the Christmas market next to the river, even when the police are present in force There are no leads so, with the permission of her DI, Adams looks for patterns. She finds tenuous link between the abductions of the kids to the disappearance of homeless people. As she pursues this slightly improbable line of enquiry she starts to see things, things other people's eyes pass over, things like the bin, looking at her with intent.

What follows is a first-class, original, London Urban Fantasy mystery, told with a style that mixes grit with humour in a way that I loved.

Inevitably, I found myself comparing it to Ben Aaronvitch's 'Rivers Of London' series. Although both deal with a London in which an unseen-by-most magical world overlays the city, the tone of the two series is different. I loved 'Rivers Of London' but, reading 'What Happened In London', I saw for the first time how privileged Peter Grant is. He has a senior Establishment figure as a mentor. He's welcomed by the most senior Genus Loci and he constantly gives little lectures on architecture and jazz that set him outside most people's experience of the world.

Adams isn't privileged. As a black woman, she's excluded from the Met Boys Club and constantly at risk of being 'othered', a risk that will increase dramatically if she's labelled as the Fox Mulder of the team. Adams can't afford to admit, even to herself, that she's seeing things that other people can't. She also can't walk away when she's the only one who might stand a chance of finding the stolen children.

I loved how Kim Watt uses magic not as a route to privilege and power but as something that preys on the vulnerable and the excluded, something that flourishes because most people would rather look away than see what shouldn't be there. Adams believes that whatever is taking the children is also taking street people. Everyone wants to find the kids. Almost no one will even accept that the street people are missing. It was an excellent example of things that are real but which we refuse to see.

I quickly lost myself in this story. I was so excited to have stumbled across a first-class Urban Fantasy set in London that I had to make myself slow down so that I didn't rush through the prose.

I'm amazed and a little disappointed to see that 'What Happened In London' wasn't one of the 2023 books that everyone made a fuss over.

I loved 'What Happened In London' and I'm hungry for more. I've already downloaded the next book, 'All Out Of Leeds'. It starts after the third Beaufort Scales book, 'Manor Of Life & Death' so that's next on my reading list. show less

IN A NUTSHELL
The best in the series so far. The tone of the book was darker, and the plot was more complicated than that of the previous books. Having Gobbelino at the heart of the action increased the intensity of the story. Having Callum’s personal history so central to the plot and setting the action in a village in a magic pocket outside the human world widened the scope. As usual, the humour leavened the story, and the action scenes were a joy.

I think ‘Gobbelino London and a show more Complication of Unicorns’, the third book in the series, was the best so far. In the two previous books, we’ve risked global destruction with an intrusion from another dimension harbouring Lovecraftian gods and the destruction of mankind via a zombie apocalypse but while they were both fun, neither of them felt as threatening as this book. Perhaps it’s just that I found the evil at the heart of this book easier to believe in. In the present climate, I have no difficulty imagining evil being done by greedy people with a totalitarian mindset.

This book was a supernatural thriller rather than an End Of The World As We Know It story. The plot was solid, the pacing added to the tension and the action scenes held a genuine sense of danger. What made it darker still was that, behind the action, there was an undercurrent of deception, betrayal and moral surrender.

I liked that Gobbelino was at the centre of the action. It made for a tightly focused story, and it helped me get to know him better. It showed me that, despite his “I’m a cat. Feed me already.” demeanour, he is brave, loyal and when necessary, fierce.

I enjoyed learning more about Callum’s backstory. It explained a lot about his ability to the Folk and how he chooses to treat them. The story takes place in the village that Callum grew up in and which he left as soon as he was able. The village exists in a pocket reality that most humans can’t find their way into and is inhabited by Folk and humans. This widened the scope of the story, both in discovering Callum’s history and in providing an environment in which magic could be abused.

Despite its darkness and tension, this was a book that made me smile. What’s not to like about anarchist rats bringing the fight to the authoritarian overlords? Or bicycle-riding, vegetarian, animal-loving Trolls founding a community to live a better, more hopeful life?

I’m definitely a fan of this series now. I’ve already bought 'Gobbelino London & a Melee of Mages’, so I can see what Gobbelino and Callum get up to next. show less

IN A NUTSHELL
'Hexed In Hawes' is the best DI Adams book in the series so far. It has more tension than the earlier books. It gave me a deeper insight into DI Adams, introduced a fairly scary Fae, moved the story arc forward and still delivered the cheerful chaos that I enjoy so much.

The DI Adams books have always been a little harder-edged than the Beaufort Scales of Gobbelino London books that I've read. Most of that is down to Adams herself. She's only reluctantly involved in the world of show more the Folk. She mostly resents the demands it makes on her, especially, perhaps, because no one ever tells her in advance what those demands are. Adams defaults to an adversarial I'd-arrest-you-if-I-could approach to magic users and Folk, partly because they want to use magic to do bad things, and partly because arresting people is what makes her feel that the world has an order that she can control.

In 'Hexed In Hawes' DI Adams gets to give her adversarial instincts full rein. She's been targeted by a Fae Lord. Worse than that, the Fae Lord has threatened her parents. This ramps up the tension in the book. For the first time, I felt that DI Adams was at risk.

The Fae that Adams is facing off with is scary: ruthless, arrogant and powerful. I loved that, even while making me believe in the Fae Lord as a threat, Kim Watt managed to ridicule his sense of entitlement and narcissism in a way that made Adams' contempt for him clear. In the end, I think it was clear that Adams is scarier than a Fae Lord. I think she's the only one who can't see that.

Underneath the tension, there was, of course, a gentle current of humour. It's a book filled with cheerful chaos, where moments of tension often just burst into unplanned, noisy, disruptive action that somehow feels like a benediction.

For me, one of the best things about 'Hexed In Hawes' was that I got to meet Adams' parents, who have come to Yorkshire to spend a week's holiday with her. They were a delight. The banter between them made me smile. They explained a lot about Adams. I was glad to see that Adams wasn't from a long line of magic users that her mother had kept secret. She is the product of a loving family and her own doggedly structured way of looking at the world. show less

IN A NUTSHELL
Filled with larger-than-life characters, lots of beautifully choreographed action scenes, gentle humour and a sense that, even with zombies rising, there are people in the world who are born to help others – they’re just not the people you might have expectd to fill that slot and quite a few of them are not human.
I enjoyed this book more than the first one. It fleshed out the relationship between Gobbelino and Callum and introduced characters that I think provide the show more foundation for a fun series.

I enjoyed ‘Gobbelino London and a Scourge of Pleasanties‘, but I didn’t get why so many of the people I know who are reading Kim Watt’s series have this series as a favourite. I think I get it now. I found this story much more engaging, not just because it was about zombies rising rather than Lovecraftian tentacles rending spacetime, but because I got to see more of how Gobbelino London think and I got a better understanding of his relationship with his human.

In the first book, I wasn't sure how Gobbelino felt about Callum. I mean, Gobbelino's a cat. It's always difficult to know what a cat is feeling about its human. Gobbelino is telling the story, so he's not always open about his feelings. It's not the cat way. In the first book, I thought he perhaps felt indebted to Callum for having saved his life but, I wasn't sure there was more to it than that. In this book, it's clear Gobbelino will do whatever is necessary to protect Callum and that Callum feels the same way about Gobbelino. I liked that one of the things that binds them together is that each recognises that the other has been damaged by past traumas, which neither of them asks about.

I admire Kim Watt's ability to create a zombie apocalypse that was tense, full of action, and threaded with gentle humour that increased my empathy with the main characters as well as making me smile. The action scenes were beautifully choreographed, allowing a large cast of characters to enter the fray without any loss of focus or tension.

What I liked most about this book was that, as well as fleshing out the relationship between Gobbelino and Callum, it introduced an ensemble cast of larger-than-life characters who added zest and variety to the story. I enjoyed learning more about the sorceress from the last book. Seeing her on her motorbike made me reassess her completely. I loved meeting the reaper and her partner. They were both full of energy and charisma. That they spent their time running 'The Dead Good Café' with the reaper doing the baking amused me. I also liked Pru, the hairless cat from 'The Sphinx Café', She and Gobbelino worked well together. I hope to see more of her.

This book has encouraged me to read more of the series. I'll be adding 'Gobbelino London & a Complication of Unicorns' to my shelves. show less