False Value

False Value continues Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series as Peter Grant, apprentice wizard and Metropolitan Police detective, faces impending fatherhood with equal parts panic and excitement. Rather than wait it out, he takes an undercover-adjacent job at the Serious Cybernetics Company, a new London startup backed by émigré tech mogul Terrence Skinner.

Peter is meant to blend in among people who are, in his own estimation, geekier than he is, but the deeper he digs into the company's secretive top-floor project, the more it becomes clear that Skinner's technology reaches back through the history of computing, from Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage, to something considerably less rational.

The novel folds Peter's usual blend of police procedure and hidden magic into a satire of tech-industry culture, with the series' running cast making appearances alongside the new setting.