This is the fourth installment in the series and a welcome return to form after what felt like a little dip in the previous two books. This is more rounded as a story and there are more laugh-out-loud one liners.

On personal note, it was also slightly thrilling and certainly extra fun to be able to just look up from the book at look out the window to the location where most of the action is supposed to take place, while ticking off mentions of the building I live in.

The fictional Skygarden estate that features so centrally in the book is loosely based on the Heygate estate, which at the time of writing was going through similar "regeneration" pangs as its fictional counter-part, down to the presence of notable trees on the site, that led to a successful local campaign to save them. In fact it seems that Aaronovitch has kept abreast of the goings-on in real life and has included aspects of them in his unusually 'serious' and somewhat political digressions on social housing.

Keeping with the Elephant and Castle, the area of central London where this book is centered, I think Aaronovitch could have done more of its infamous shopping centre, itself, now being demolished as I write.

My edition comes with a sweet unrelated short story, featuring Leslie and Peter and set in the Covent Garden branch of Waterstones, which is an added bonus, with its cute morale about books and reading.

This book has renewed my interest in the series. Onward and upward to the next volume!