Can You Hear the "Whispers Underground"? Quiz

Answer: Spray painting graffiti

Macky is starting to write a message on the wall in the centre of the tunnel. He gets so far, then he is killed by a ghostly train. A few minutes later this cycle repeats. PC Grant discovers that he can interact with Macky to the point of holding a conversation, but this doesn't change the outcome.

The school and tunnel described exist in the real world, and can be found on maps of London. This is the case with most of the places described by the author in this series.

Answer: Baker Street

Baker Street, with its statue of the famed detective Sherlock Holmes outside, is the location here.

Using the CCTV (which is rather prevalent on Transport for London property) the victim has been seen coming out of the tunnels and clambering on to the platform, where he promptly dies. The cause of death is having been stabbed by a bit of pottery. Two problems arise from this event. The first one is how he got into the tunnels in the first place. The second is that the victim's father is a US politician, important enough to get the FBI involved by way of a liaison officer.

Answer: I'm here to cut the grass

The floating market isn't a waterbourne event, although that would be thematic for a "Rivers of London" novel. It is one that is held at different places on each occasion, like the "oldest, established, permanent, floating, crap game in New York" from the musical "Guys and Dolls".
The market is referred to as a Goblin market, for those of the magical persuasion. A similar market can be found in the Neil Gaiman book "Neverwhere".
This is described as being a similar concept to a "nazareth", which is apparently a market for goods of dodgy origins, or in plain English stolen. Whether this term exists outside of TV and literature I don't know.
The wrong answers are all obtained by combining two of the titles of the "Rivers of London" novels.

Answer: Effra

Mama Thames is the goddess of the River Thames. Or at least of the tidal section. Father Thames is the god for the non-tidal section, everything upstream of Teddington Lock. The songs of Father Thames and daughters of Mama Thames are the river gods and goddesses (or genius loci) of the tributaries of their respective reaches of the river.

Of the options given, only Effra is a daughter of Mama Thames. The River Effra is a small river that is now part of the water drainage of South London. Oxley is the son of Father Thames. The River Oxley is another name for the Abbey River which runs through Chertsey. The character Oxley is the right-hand man (or god or river) of Father Thames.

Leaving the Rivers of London setting and passing instead into British mythology we have Hafren and Sabrena. These are the Welsh and Latin names respectively for the goddess of the River Severn. Statues of her can be seen in and along the River Severn valley including Shrewsbury and Bridgnorth.

Answer: Scandinavia

Despite the name, a demon trap isn't a way to trap demons. It is described as being more akin to a magical landmine. DCI Nightingale claims that they were first created by Vikings, then refined by the Nazis. Peter surmises that it was the boredom of the long Norse winters that drove the Vikings' research.

The demon trap in the story is found in a flat in the Barbican area of London. One previously appeared in the novel "Moon Over Soho", when it was found during the raid on the "Strip Club of Doctor Moreau".

Answer: Tolkien Elvish

The inscription is not magical, the usage is in the same vein as the messages chalked on bombs being loaded onto aircraft in World War 2. Nightingale gives an example of engravings found on a demon trap in WW2 (not in Tolkien's Elvish), which translated read, "this is not a moral argument".

The runes on the trap in this tale when translated read, "if you can read these words then you are not only a nerd but probably dead". Peter recognises the etching's source, but gets it rendered into English by the simple option of putting it on social media.

Answer: German archaeologists

"Whispers Underground" is set in a snowy winter. Detective Inspector Thomas Nightingale, who is Peter's boss and head of the Folly, reminisces about a previous occasion when he had been in a snowy environment. Apart from stating that it was a "complete wild goose chase", no further information is revealed. It is possible that in the future more of Nightingale's backstory will be told.

So far in the series it has been revealed that Thomas worked with the
Foreign Office in various places around the world prior to World War 2. It has also been mentioned several times that during the war Nightingale was involved in the Battle of Ettersberg, where many British wizards are said to have perished.

Answer: Fleet

Fleet, goddess or genius loci for the River Fleet, proclaims she has more dogs than she can control. For some people that would be one, but for a river goddess I suspect it is a higher number.
Ziggy is a border collie with odd coloured eyes. I understand this is popular with shepherds as it intimidates the sheep. Medically this is known as heterochromia iridum. David Bowie is popularly believed to have suffered from this, one of his alter-egos was Ziggy Stardust, hence the name of the dog.

Of the other options, Olympia is another of Mama Thames's daughters while Colne and Ash are descendants of Father Thames.

A "genius loci" is the spirit of a place, notably in these books it refers to the gods and goddesses of specific rivers. Others do occur though throughout the series though associated with forests and buildings.

This is not a unique concept in fantasy literature. "Tom Bombadil" from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings could be described as a genius loci of his forest. A second example of this would be the Forestal, "Caerroil Wildwood", from the "First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant" by Steven Donaldson.

Answer: Isaacs

According to the premise of the novels, Isaac Newton was the first person to formally write down English magic. This is comparable to the process of recording scientific experiments. He also founded the Folly, where his statue stands in the entranceway. One of the attributes of Peter Grant is his experimentation to reconcile magic with scientific method.

Zachary "Zach" Taylor is part fae, a term that is used to mean not totally human in the same way Greeks and Romans are said to have used the word barbarian to mean "people who are not us". Zach is an inveterate liar, shifty and evasive, attempting to change the subject when asked a question. Seems to me that he would go far in politics. Instead, he becomes a recurring character, who appears in some of the later books in the series.

Answer: Trespassing on the railway

Abigail is introduced as being one of the "friends and relatives" of Peter's mother. As he says that this "is estimated to comprise 20% of the Sierra Leonean community currently resident in the UK", it covers a large number of people.

Abigail contacts Peter to say she has seen a ghost in the railway tunnels running beneath her school. She insists Peter comes with her to the tunnel to investigate. This is the initial incident of trespass at the start of the book.

At the conclusion of the tale, the British Transport Police have found her in the same tunnel. Abigail's justification is that she was trying to complete the ghost's graffiti in the hopes it will let him get closure.