No city on Roundworld can claim to have a barmier solution to crime than Discworld’s Ankh-Morpork. Find me a city with institutions governing how theft and murder should be carried out, and I’ll eat my Pratchetts. In Ankh-Morpork, theft is perfectly legal – if you’re a licensed thief. Likewise, murder is legal – if you’re a licensed assassin. Don’t want to be mugged or killed? Pay your debts to the guilds.

Crime as commodity is Lord Vetinari’s tried-and-true solution to keeping crime low. The only thing a would-be criminal has to worry about is if they’ve got a license, and pay their guild’s membership fees. Of course, some would-be criminals don’t worry about licenses and fees. Come to think of it, they’re not all that ‘would-be,’ either. They’ve decided that yes, they would like to deal with the City Watch. The whole City Watch, sixty strong – and Samuel fucking Vimes.

Or, in The Fifth Elephant, at least they WOULD have to worry about Vimes, if he wasn’t summoned by Vetinari to go swanning about in Uberwald as an ambassador. A new Low King of the Dwarves is being crowned, and Ankh-Morpork could really do with reasonably-priced barrels of fat from the neighbours. Just before he leaves, he’s told about a murder connected to the theft of a replica Scone of Stone – a priceless Dwarfish artefact – and all he can do is sit and spin.

There’s no law in Uberwald. Vimes, though accompanied by familiar faces, is a stranger in a strange land. Out here, his Watch badge is just a foreign trinket (or perhaps a makeshift ashtray). He’s not the Commander of the Watch, he is His Grace, His Excellency, The Duke of Ankh, Sir Samuel Vimes. When his assigned clerk, Inigo Skimmer, tells him he is Ankh-Morpork in Uberwald – the whole thing, smells and all, in one man – that doesn’t make things any better.

They’re going to a coronation that can’t happen. Every dwarf the disc over knows you can’t crown a Low King without the Scone. Operas have been written about its theft that go on for literal weeks. His Grace, His Excellency, The Duke of Ankh can’t get involved, because he’s a diplomat, and he’s having to drag Sam Vimes kicking and screaming into diplomatic functions, just to lie and act like everything’s fine. It’s a good time to hide the fact that everyone’s having a bad time.

The Uberwaldean dwarfs are old-fashioned. From their point of view, when Ankh-Morpork sends a troll and a female-presenting dwarf as diplomats, they’re not sending their best. Over here, dwarfs and trolls are still at war, and every dwarf’s a man. They’re all the more agitated because Rhys Rhysson, Low King elect, hates but tolerates Ankh-Morpork; the popular candidate, Albrecht Albrechtson, would rather rip the whole city straight from the loam.

It’s only after the Igor serving the Ankh-Morpork embassy is attacked that Vimes realises what it means to be Ankh-Morpork in Uberwald. The embassy is technically Ankh-Morpork territory. A crime committed there is one Ankh-Morpork should investigate – and he’s pretty sure this is related to the murder and theft case from before. That makes this a national security concern.

If you commit a crime in Ankh-Morpork, and Sam Vimes knows about it, there’s no playing games. Sure, there’s the chase, but no-one ever said you had to run from the law. There’s a lot of reasons Vimes pursues a culprit, and pleasure’s not one of them. Nor is it because the culprit’s merely ‘accused.’

This isn’t just any old petty crime, though. It’s not your average murder. It’s a theft, swallowed by murder, wrapped in politics, and delivered diplomatically to a place where the law can’t go. And it all needs to be solved before the day of the coronation, else the dwarfs go to war.

“Needs to be solved?” Everyone keeps saying it’s “a locked room where they left the bloody door open!” While they’re all focused on the opened door, Vimes has his sights squarely set on answering why this is a crime no-one WANTS to solve. Messy it might be, but there’s a neat intention: someone wants the dwarfs to fight. There’s something more behind that replica. No-one would steal it for a lark.

Someone committed murder in Ankh-Morpork and fled to Uberwald. There’s no crime in Uberwald because there’s no law. In Uberwald, where everyone follows the Lore, someone thought they could kill, hide under its protection, and come out stronger. All the factions in Uberwald – dwarfs, vampires, werewolves – seek strength of some kind. It’s only strength, some say, when only a few people have it. That’s the lore: survival of the fittest. What you keep is what you can.

Vimes, of course, finds out. I hope that’s not a big spoiler. It’s a whodunnit – he either finds out or he doesn’t. What kept me hooked was the mad cocktail of panic, urgency, and (as I remember it) knowing as much as Vimes does the whole way through. It doesn’t matter how far they run – the heat haze of his Nemesis-like anger is firmly locked on. They might not find it nipping at their heels yet, but it’s always approaching, and until justice is served, it will never, ever stop.

Fifth Elephant, for me, has been peak Vimes action. All the suspects seem just as guilty as each other, so when Vimes has a new hypothesis, the psychic whiplash snaps at you to keep reading. We also see just about every character being pushed to their limits in one way or another. It’s those gripping plot developments that I think Feet of Clay and Jingo didn’t have enough of.¹

Next in the City Watch series is Night Watch. It takes place in a not-too-distant Ankh-Morpork, before Vetinari became its Patrician. Ankh-Morpork didn’t always treat crime as commodity – as I said, that was a Vetinari invention. A lot of disembodied voices on the web hype up this book, and I’m looking forward to what’s in store.

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1. Although, it’s been a while since I read either. Don’t get me wrong, I liked them. I just don’t want to read through them again for another post. My backlog’s already full enough as it is! ↩︎