What Abigail Did Tha Summer, Ben Aaronovitch [if you give a mouse a cookie read aloud txt] 📗

John Berlyne and Stevie Finegan at Zeno. Then onto my fellow writers Andrew Cartmel and James Swallow for support, editorial advice and occasionally lunch.

Onto production with Katie Espiner (big boss), Emad Akhtar (editor and anecdote provider), Paul Stark (audio-meister), and William O’Mullane (media guru) at Orion, Steve O’Gorman (defiantly freelance copyeditor), and everyone at Subterranean Press.

In the research department we find Kirsty Potter (Northumbria Police Forensic SOCO), Clive Hall (architect), and classicist Penny Goodman from the University of Leeds. Not to mention several hundred people on Twitter who provided emergency research.

Penultimately, there are the people I lean on outrageously to insulate me from the dreadful travails of the world – Anne Hall, Genn McMenemy, Sara Baladi and Andy Ryan.

And finally my son Karifa, for his continued tolerance of my bad habits when writing (not to be confused with my bad writing habits).

Credits

Ben Aaronovitch and Gollancz would like to thank everyone at Orion who worked on the publication of What Abigail Did That Summer in the UK.

Editorial

Emad Akhtar

Brendan Durkin

Copy editor

Steve O’Gorman

Proof reader

Jane Howard

Audio

Paul Stark

Amber Bates

Contracts

Anne Goddard

Paul Bulos

Jake Alderson

Design

Lucie Stericker

Tomas Almeida

Joanna Ridley

Nick May

Editorial Management

Charlie Panayiotou

Jane Hughes

Alice Davis

Finance

Jennifer Muchan

Jasdip Nandra

Afeera Ahmed

Elizabeth Beaumont

Sue Baker

Marketing

Brittany Sankey

Production

Paul Hussey

Operations

Jo Jacobs

Sharon Willis

Lisa Pryde

Lucy Brem

Publicity

Will O’Mullane

Sales

Jen Wilson

Esther Waters

Victoria Laws

Rachael Hum

Ellie Kyrke-Smith

Frances Doyle

Georgina Cutler

Also by Ben Aaronovitch

Rivers of London novels

Rivers of London

Moon Over Soho

Whispers Under Ground

Broken Homes

Foxglove Summer

The Hanging Tree

Lies Sleeping

False Value

Rivers of London novellas

The Furthest Station

The October Man

Rivers of London graphic novels

Body Work

Night Witch

Black Mould

Cry Fox

Water Weed

Action at a Distance

The Fey and the Furious

Copyright

First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Gollancz

an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

Carmelite House, 50 Victoria Embankment

London ec4y 0dz

An Hachette UK Company

Copyright © Ben Aaronovitch 2021

The moral right of Ben Aaronovitch to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN (eBook) 978 1 473 22436 0

Typeset by Input Data Services Ltd, Somerset

www.gollancz.co.uk