Welcome to Pseudopolis Yard, Ankh-Morpork City Watch Headquarters...

Do you like police procedurals? With oddball characters, intricate twists, red herrings, the occasional running gag, deep social commentary and even all-out satire? Well... you probably weren't expecting dwarves, dragons, werewolves and heroes with crown-shaped birthmarks, were you? At least not in the actual police force itself. It's sword-and-sorcery meets Hill Street Blues, and I love it. So why didn't I think of it?

The main character in all the City Watch books is his Grace his Excellency Sir Samuel Vimes (the author's alter ego, as far as I'm concerned. All the author's deeply-held views concerning the universe are also held by Old Stoneface, the most politically astute, most socially marginalised, man in Ankh-Morpork). Samuel "It's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness" Vimes. When the city is in chaos and Nobby's been at the petty cash again and Fred Colon is falling apart, Sam Vimes can be expected to save the day. Usually by unleashing Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson, six foot eight in his police-issue boots, raised by dwarves in the mountains and earnestly in love with Sergeant Angua, who is a werewolf in her spare time - and so doesn't require a police-dog handler, which is a great saving on man-hours. Or troll, dwarf, or zombie-hours, come to think of it. Er.

    The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to to spend less money.
    Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
    But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
    This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socio-economic unfairness.

Whether it's dragons, mad assassins or just fractal time discontinu...ums, it's bound to happen in Ankh-Morpork, on Vimes's watch - and just when the city was settling down nicely. But the Discworld exists right on the edges of probability, and the trouble with edges is that they are borderline situations. And sometimes nasty things come sneaking across borders, who are not necessarily purely interested in a wonderful future in the fruit-picking and domestic service industries (to quote Thief of Time).

Sir Samuel has learned about keeping the peace the hard way... in the teeth of the mob, the idiotic upper classes (who couldn't find their collective bottom with both hands, in Vimes's opinion), and the People's Republic of Treacle Mine Road (Truth! Justice! Freedom! Reasonably-priced Love! And a hard-boiled Egg!). In short, everything that it is possible for an ordinary copper to have to face. And carries it off - more by sheer chance than anything else. This is a man who keeps half a bottle of Bearhugger's Old Vitriolic Whiskey in his bottom drawer as a sort of test; he wears his hair shirts on the inside. By far my most-favourite character in all of the tour de pratchett; probably because of the sheer humanity the author breathes into him, the way we are put into the midsts of Vimes's thought processes - and he only thinks of himself as an ordinary copper, which is like saying that Vetinari is run-of-the-mill politician, or Sergeant Angua is a blonde bombshell who speaks with a slight Uberwaldean accent...

    It had all been too ... good. In a few short years he, Sam Vimes, had gone up in the world like a balloon. He was a duke, he commanded the Watch, he was powerful, he was married to a woman whose compassion, love and understanding he knew a man such as he did not deserve, and he was as rich as Creosote. Fortune had rained its gravy, and he'd been the man with the big bowl. And it had all happened so fast.
    And then Young Sam had come along. At first it had been fine. The baby was, well, a baby, all lolling head and burping and unfocused eyes, entirely the preserve of his mother. And then, one evening, his son had turned and looked directly at Vimes, with eyes that for his father outshone the lamps of the world, and fear had poured into Sam Vimes's life in a terrible wave. All this good fortune, all this fierce joy ... it was wrong. Surely the universe could not allow this amount of happiness in one man, not without presenting a bill. Somewhere a big dark wave was cresting, and when it broke over his head it would wash everything away. Some days, he was sure he could hear its distant roar...

Vimes doesn't mind the undead - as long as they aren't vampires. But it's a man's life in the Watch - or troll's, or dwarf's, or... well, now there's a gnome, a werewolf... and anyway, no-one knows what Nobby is. Nobby could be anything (although it would seem that the Earl of Ankh is a definite possibility. At least he can't breed.)

   "Vell, zat is good news!" said Mrs Winkings, leaning back.
   Vimes wanted to shake her and shout: You're not a vampire, Doreen! You're married to one, yes, but he didn't become one until a time when it is beyond human imagining that he could possibly have wanted to bite you! All the real Black Ribonners try to act normal and unobtrusive! No flowing cloaks, no sucking and definitely no ripping the underwired nightdresses off young ladies! Everyone knows John Not-A-Vampire-At All Smith used to be Count Vargo St Gruet von Vilinus! But now he smokes a pipe and wears thos horrible sweaters and he collects bananas and makes models of human organs out of matchsticks because he thinks hobbies make you more human! But you, Doreen? You were born in Cockbill Street! Your mum was a washerwoman! No one would ever rip your nightdress off, not without a crane! But you're so ... into this, right? It's a damn hobby. You try to look more like vampires than vampires do! Incidentally, those pointy teeth rattle when you talk!

It's possible, had Carrot never arrived in Ankh-Morpork, sword swinging absentmindedly at dandelions, that there would be no Watch. No rule of law, no careful balance of power, no way of making the big criminals pay for their big crimes. Perhaps, somewhere, there might still have been some poor berk ringing his bell and yelling All's Well! without much conviction, but that isn't the Watch we've come to know and love. And we would have nothing to read in bed at one o'clock while munching sandwiches and slurping cocoa.

    Corporal Carrot, Ankh-Morpork City Guard (Night Watch), sat down in his nightshirt, took up his pencil, sucked the end for a moment, and then wrote:

"Dearest Mume and Dad,
                                          'Well here is another fine Turnup for the Books, for I have been made Corporal!! It means another Five Dollars a month plus also I have a new jerkin with, two stripes upon it as well. And a new copper badge! It is a Great responsibility!! This is all because we have got new recruits because the Patrician who, as I have formerly vouchsafed is the ruler of the city, has agreed the Watch must reflect the ethnic makeup of the City--"

Carrot is the sort who radiates honesty, earnestness and a hint of soap. He's also the heir to the throne of Ankh, a fact everyone seems to know, although no one mentions it owing to Carrot's disinclination to be anything but a copper. Nevertheless, quite a few City Watch books have featured insane plots to put a king on the throne of Ankh, whether Carrot or not, and Vimes has always deplored humankind's tendencies to bend at the knees.

    "Aagragaah," said Detritus, mournfully.
    "Don't mind me, just don't spit it on my boot," said Vimes.
    "It mean--" Detritus waved a huge hand, "Like...dem things, what only comes in..." he paused and looked at his fingers, while his lips moved, "...fours. Aagragaah. It mean lit'rally der time when you see dem little pebbles and you jus' know dere's gonna be a great big landslide on toppa you and it already too late to run. Dat moment, dat's aagragaah."
    Vimes's own lips moved. "Forebodings?"
    "Dat's der bunny."
    "Where does the word come from?"
    Detritus shrugged. "Maybe it named after der soun' you make just as a t'ousand ton of rock hit you."

    * Constable Visit-The-Ungodly-With-Explanatory-Pamphlets was a good copper, Vimes always said, and that was his highest term of praise. He was an Omnian with his countrymen's almost pathological interest in evangelical religion and spent all his wages on pamphlets; he even had his own printing press. The results were handed out to anyone interested and everyone who wasn't interested as well. Even Detritus couldn't clear a crowd faster than Visit, Vimes said. And on his days off he could be seen trampling the streets with his colleague, Smite-The-Ungodly-With-Cunning-Arguments. So far they hadn't made a single convert. Vimes thought that Visit was probably a very nice man underneath it all, but somehow he could never face the task of finding out.

    Colon had always thought that heroes had some special kind of clockwork that made them go out and die famously for god, country and apple pie, or whatever particular delicacy their mother made. It had never occurred to him that they might do it because they'd get yelled at if they didn't.
    He reached down.
    "Come on up, Nobby," he said. "And remember we're doing this for the gods, Ankh-Morpork and--" It seemed to Colon that a foodstuff would indeed be somehow appropriate. "And my mum's famous knuckle sandwich!"
    "Our mum never made us knuckle sandwiches," said Nobby, as he hauled himself on to the planks. "But you'd be amazed at what she could do with a bit of cheese..."
    "Yeah, all right, but that ain't much of a battle cry, is it? 'For the gods, Ankh-Morpork and amazing things Nobby's mum can do with cheese'? That'll strike fear in the hearts of the enemy!" said Sergeant Colon, as they crept forward.

    "Sergeant?"
    Colon braced himself. Outside, the bells were dying away.
    "Did you know she was a werewolf?"
    "Um...Captain Vimes kind of hinted, sir..."
    "How did he hint?"
    Colon took a step back.
    He sort of said, 'Fred, she's a damn werewolf. I don't like it any more than you do, but Vetinari says we've got to take one of them as well, and a werewolf's better than a vampire or a zombie, and that's all there is to it.' That's what he hinted."
    "I see."

    "We've struck a blow for ugly womanhood," Sally declared loudly. "Shoes, men, coffins ... never accept the first one you see."
    "Oh, shoes," said Cheery, "I can talk about shoes. Has anyone seen the new Yan Rockhammer solid copper slingbacks?"
    "Er, we don't go to a metalworker for our footwear, dear," said Sally. "Oh ... I think I'm going to be sick ..."
    "Serves you right for drinking ... vine," said Angua maliciously.
    "Oh, ha, ha," said the vampire from the shadows. "I'm perfectly fine with sarcastic pause vine, thank you! What I shouldn't have drunk was sticky drinks with names made up by people with less sense of humour than, uh, excuse me ... oh, noooo ..."
    "Are you all right?" said Cheery.
    "I've just thrown up a small, hilarious, paper umbrella ..."
    "Oh dear."
    "And a sparkler..."

Terry Pratchett's "voice", as we say in formal English essays, is never more apparent than in the City Watch series, although he's grown and matured as an author very much since the early books. I admit I have never really taken to Rincewind, probably because he's so damn spineless, while Vimes and Susan Sto Helit and Granny Weatherwax appeal to me because I too like to ambush monsters in the dark - with a crowbar. I hate the evil green furry things that haunt the underneath of children's beds on principle; Susan, who has grown up on first-name terms with Jack Frost and the Soul Cake Duck (a low dig at the Easter bunny, actually), and helped feed the Pale Horse of Death, is never more happy than when she is faced with the undead. Because they're a lot nicer than the unliving.

The City Watch books

Guards! Guards!
Men at Arms
Feet of Clay
Jingo
The Fifth Elephant
Night Watch
Thud!