The Severed Streets by Paul Cornell, reviewed by Greg L. Johnson

New York: Tor Books, 2014; $26.99 hc; 401 pages

It’s the twenty-first century, and London is a steaming mess of social unrest and political corruption. The resulting stress has the police simultaneously gearing up for the possibility of violence in the streets and threatening to strike. Then comes a series of murders under mysterious circumstances—the victims were all in enclosed spaces, and the only other people present couldn’t have committed the crimes—that lead investigators with a sense of history to only one conclusion. It’s Jack the Ripper.

After that dramatic opening, The Severed Streets settles into a rather perfunctory summation of the events in the first novel in this series, London Falling, in which Detective Inspector James Quill and his squad of investigators discover a hidden London, one that can only be observed by those with the Sight to see. The supernatural exists as a reality behind that perceived by most of us, and there are people who know this and use it to their advantage.

With that premise in mind, the novel takes us inside the lives of the members of Quill’s squad, each of whom is coming to grips with their newfound abilities in their own ways. For Lisa Ross there is the tantalizing prospect of regaining her dead father; for Tony Costain, it’s a desire to escape from hell. For everyone, there are the difficulties of reconciling their new abilities with their regular lives. But while they’re struggling with personal issues, the Ripper strikes again, and the streets of London are increasingly restless.

In The Severed Streets, London is portrayed with a high sense of realism. In contrast to fantasies set in fictional universes or alternate realities, Cornell goes out of his way to establish the novel’s London as closely akin to our London. The places and names are there; people read Harry Potter; there is a looming scandal involving politicians and newspapers; and, perhaps most intriguingly, Neil Gaiman appears as a character in the book. It all acts to serve the novel’s premise that what is being portrayed is a reality that not so much differs from but instead encompasses our own, perceived by a privileged few and hidden from everyone else.

This opens up the range of possibilities when conducting a murder investigation, especially when there is only one superior officer on the police squad with some understanding of what Quill and his team are capable of doing. Add in the personal problems of the characters, and the first half of The Severed Streets reads very much like a television episode. (Cornell has written for a number of television and radio series.) There’s enough investment in the characters for the reader to make an emotional connection and plenty of plot to keep things moving along. It builds a feeling that, despite the presence of Jack the Ripper, this is not the darkest of stories. The violence happens to secondary characters, and there are moments that feel like knowing winks where a reference to Monty Python’s policemen with wands would seem every bit as appropriate as an encounter with life and death on the street.

That changes about halfway through the novel. It begins when we learn just how much Lisa Ross is willing to give up in order to save her father and how far Tony Costain is willing to go in order to save himself. The appearances of Neil Gaiman also signal the change in tone. At first his presence seems a bit of a lark, an oddball character in the back of a bar. Gaiman’s second appearance ties him more into the fabric of The Severed Streets reality; Gaiman shares the main characters’ gift of Sight, and it’s suggested that one of the novel’s main conceits explains the difference between the televised and prose versions of Gaiman’s Neverwhere.

Gaiman’s third appearance completes the transformation of The Severed Streets from a supernatural murder mystery with winks at popular culture to an intense, dark story, one with life and death consequences for all the characters, and a literal journey through hell for one in particular. It all leads to an ending that conspicuously promises more darkness to come.

That makes The Severed Streets a novel with several elements that, taken singly, could overwhelm the rest of the story. Neil Gaiman’s appearances could be a distracting gimmick; instead they subtly influence the tone and direction of the novel. In like manner, any story involving Jack the Ripper generally becomes a Jack the Ripper story with all the attention to gory details and the mystery of who Jack was that entails. Here, the Ripper’s presence starts the story but doesn’t end it; solving his mystery isn’t the whole story but instead leads to a greater conspiracy. Finally, a journey through hell is mythic material in and of itself; also, here it serves to both define a character and set the reader up for what’s to come.

Throwing all these major ingredients into the mix is the literary equivalent of creating a dish with big flavors, any of which could dominate the taste buds but which. when mixed correctly, create a sensation all their own. The change in tone midway through The Severed Streets suggests that Cornell is still working on finding the perfect way to express the story he wants to tell, but his ability to juggle several different story elements promises a continuing story that could appeal both to fans of Cornell’s Doctor Who stories and the dark urban fantasy of Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim series. It’s a difficult balance to maintain but one that promises a captivating journey all its own.

Greg Johnson lives in Minneapolis.