conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a plot for a book about Grant, Zach, Lesley entitled Whispers Under Ground.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Whispers Under Ground: The story commences soon after the events in the previous book in the series, Moon Over Soho, during which an evil wizard known as the Faceless Man nearly killed Grant and his police superior and magical mentor Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale.\nUnder Nightingale's direction Peter Grant, a young police constable (and the first officially mandated apprentice wizard in over half a century), and Lesley May, Grant's partner from his days in the regular force (seriously disfigured in an earlier case involving magic, who has become Nightingale's de facto second apprentice, now wearing a surgical mask as part of the ongoing attempt to rebuild her ruined face) investigate.\nIn the first instance, what they investigate is a claim by Abigail Kamara - an annoyingly persistent neighborhood girl who knows, via Grant's mum, that he 'does magic', has seen a ghost.\nReluctantly Grant and Lesley investigate and they are surprised to not only see Abigail's ghost, but see him hit by a ghostly train while trying to spray-paint graffiti on a tunnel wall, the unfinished message still visible when the apparition fades.\nShortly after a call from Detective Inspector Stephanopoulos of the Belgravia Murder Investigation Team to make a 'Falcon Assessment' - to decide if magic played a part - in a murder at the Baker Street Underground station: the victim, American art student, James Gallagher, was fatally stabbed with a potsherd.\nWhen he examines the murder weapon Grant senses magic and he and DC Sahra Guleed of Belgravia MIT are dispatched to James's apartment, where he finds a bowl with the same magical 'signature'.\nJames's roommate Zach Palmer tells them he thinks it came from the Portobello Market but in attempting to follow this lead Grant discovers Zach is deceiptful, shifty and thoroughly untrustworthy but not, apparently, involved in the murder.\nThe investigation is complicated the arrival of Special Agent Kimberley Reynolds, FBI, a friend of the Gallagher family whose involvement is wished on the MIT at the insistence of James's father, a US senator.\nIn short order Reynolds quickly concludes the mere presence of Grant indicates either a lack of appropriate zeal or the intention to bungle the investigation as payback for the Senator's criticism of the UK's human rights record.\nWhile the seething Reynolds and the bemused Grant cross swords Nightingale pursues a lead on the Faceless Man who is known to have been trained by a wizard who went to Oxford in the 1960s and belonged to a dining club known as the Little Crocodiles.\nNightingale interviews known associates while Peter is left to pursue the murder investigation.\nReasoning St Martins School of Art might yield clues about Jame's state of mind Grant visits his professor, then attends an exhibition of work by Irish sculptor Ryan Carroll.\nPeter instantly realises some of the pieces incorporate pottery identical to the potshard murder weapon and the bowl at Jame's flat.\nWhile at the exhibition Peter encounters another magical practitioner, Madame Teng, and Fleet realising he is under close scrutiny, and not just by an FBI Special Agent with an agenda.\nConvinced Zach is a lead rather Grant rescues him from small-time local villains The Nolan Brothers and takes Zach - who has been thrown out of James's apartment - to The Folly partly for his own protection but partly to keep him under observation, but to Grant's surprise Zach announces he knows where he is and what The Folly is all about because he is a half-fairy on his father's side.\nGrant and Lesley pursue their enquiries at a 'Nasareth', or Goblin Market, while Nightingale returns to the frail and wheelchair-bound Albert Woodville-Gentle only to find him gone but not without left behind a potentially lethal magical booby trap, one that 'detonates' with such magical force everyone at the market senses it and instantly turns to the forces of law and order.\n(As Lesley cynically remarks: Now you want us.\n) Examining the trap it becomes clear it was not set by the Woodville-Gentle but the Faceless Man, leading Nightingale to conclude the Faceless Man was once Woodville-Gentle's apprentice.\nTrailing the Nolan brothers with Grant and Lesley May them delivering vegetables and collecting pottery.\nSince the pots exactly match the style and material of the shard used as a murder weapon so investigating the history of the warehouse where the pottery is taken and stored, and discover it is owned by The Beale Corporation, which was once the maker of 'unbreakable' pottery for use in the less genteel parts of the far-flung British Empire during its Victoria heyday, and that the founders were instrumental in excavating the tunnels that later became the heart of the London Underground railway.\nReturning to the address where the vegetables were delivered Grant and Lesley discover it is not a house but a hollow facade one room deep, clearly no lived-in but with a hatch in the floor covering a concealed (and illicit) folding stair of antique design that leads to the tunnel system.\nGrant and Sergeant Jaget Kumar, the BTP's own outre-events specialist, investigate, but they are attacked by pallid large-eyed individuals who fire at them and discover Special Agent Reynolds, who they thought was a suspect, returns fire with her issue weapon, alarming the pair since it was remotely possible she might actually hit someone and perhaps kill them.\nAfter an exchange of pithy comments about who saved whom, and why the powers that be might not be inclined to turn a blind eye to armed foreign nationals running around loose shooting at shadows Reynolds explained she looked at the forensic reports, worked out James had been in the sewers then checked the covers around his apartment for signs of tampering.\nHaving escaped her CTC 'minder' Kitteridge, she decided to conduct her own investigation since no one else was doing anything.\nGiven they all ended up in the same place being shot at and only Kumar knows the way out she joins the pair and after a dark, dirty and dangerous pursuit that involves an extended trek through the sewage system they eventually find their way to the surface, exiting via an illicit rave hosted in a disused service tunnel by junior river goddesses Olympia and Chelsea, where Peter finds Zach - who they call 'goblin boy' working as a barman.\nEmerging onto an Underground station platform the trio spot one of the pallid large-eyed individuals, chase him on to a platform but when they try to overpower him he uses magic to tear the platform apart, burying Grant in the process.\nSmothered, entombed, unable to move or use magic in any useful way Grant waits for rescue and enters a dream-like state, seeing visions.\nHe is finally rescued only because Lady Ty knew where he was and directed the rescuers to him, later informing him that despite his defiance in past encounters saving his life leaves him firmly in her debt and that he better not forget it.\nWhile recovering in hospital Lesley visits Grant and, after telling him the 'earth bender' got away (and eating all his grapes), explains she had confirmed Beale, Gallagher and Carroll are all connected through the Unbreakable Empire Pottery corporation, being descended from founders Gallagher and Carroll, who emigrated to America and Ireland.\nLater Zach also visits Grant, plunders the food Grant's mum provides and accidentally lets slip that he knows the pallid large-eyed man.\nRealizing his slip Zach runs for it with Grant, barefoot and wearing only a gape-backed hospital gown, chasing him out of the hospital and through Christmas crowds until Zach passes Sainsburys where Lesley, her arms filled with shopping, trips him up so Grant can arrest him.\nonly to nearly get arrested himself on the basis he's was doing the chasing, he's barefoot, wearing a hospital gown open at the back and being in hot pursuit hadn't had time to find out what had happened to his warrant card.\nWhen questioned Zach finally admits he not only knows a pallid large-eyed person who lives underground, he reveals the Quiet People have been minding their own business, living underground and making pottery for the Beale corporation, since the mid Victorian Era.\nAgainst the background of fevered speculation about how to address the issue of an unknown number of Quiet People who have colonised capital for at least a century Grant, accompanied by Lesley May and Special Agent Reynolds go down into the sewers to confront the fey who Seawol calls 'the mole people'.\nAs they talk to the Quiet People it emerges James Gallagher was courting the daughter of the chieftain of the Quiet People.\nSince Zach was infatuated despite being regarded as a mere errand runner, he briefly becomes a serious suspect until Grant has a sudden insight: Whoever stabbed James Gallagher with a razor-sharp potsherd cut themselves in the process and because Zachery Palmer has no injuries he's in the clear.\nAt this point suspicion falls on the one person involved who had means, motive and opportunity.\nWhen confronted, the killer confesses, claiming it was the ease with which the gifted young American effortlessly surpassed him, the true motive for murder being neither politics nor magic, and not even for monetary gain but rather in a fit of lethally spiteful envy.\nWith the murder case resolved the Folly team follow up on clues that lead to what they suppose is the base of Faceless Man only to discover the body of his former master, dead from effect of using too much magic for too long and too often.\nReynolds departs with the senator, taking his son home, ruefully acknowledging to Peter that the situation was and remains far more complex than she dreamed possible, and that she can't speak about it unless she actively wants her FBI career to end abruptly (and in all likelihood be put on psychological evaluation for life).\nThe story concludes with a call from the BTP informing Grant Abigail has been detained but not yet charged for vandalism on railway property and that she has dropped his name.\nGrant duly arrives at the station to find her reading a comic, unworried by the prospect of charges because what she was doing wasn't vandalism but an attempt to free the trapped ghost by completing his graffito.\nGrant has the charges dropped, negotiates her good behaviour on the condition that when she encounters anything magical she attends weekly meetings where she will show him the notes she will make and that he and Lesley May will follow up.\nAs he drives her home Abigail gives him her first report: while on her mission to lay the ghost she saw a fox who gave her the following message: Tell your friends they're on the wrong side of the river.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Whispers Under Ground
  It was entirely possible that any magical side to the murder rested with the killer, not the victim. I probably should have stayed in the tunnels with Sergeant Kumar and the search team.
  So of course I found what I was looking for five minutes later, downstairs, while we were getting a statement from Zach.
  There was a cup of coffee waiting on the table for me. I sat down next to Carey but kept my posture relaxed, took my coffee, and leaned back slightly as I sipped it. Zach's hands were trembling and he was unconsciously rocking back and forth as we went through his movements in the last twenty-four hours. It's always useful to have your witnesses a little bit unnerved, but you can have too much of a good thing.
  An earthenware bowl was sitting on the kitchen table with two apples, a splotchy banana, and a handful of minicab cards inside it. It was the same rich biscuit color as the shard I'd found in the Underground but too curved to be an identical piece.
  I took another gulp of coffee, which was definitely the good stuff, and casually brushed my fingers along the rim of the bowl. There it was, fainter than the shard, heat and charcoal and what I realized was the smell of pig shit and... I wasn't sure what.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Whispers Under Ground
  It was entirely possible that any magical side to the murder rested with the killer, not the victim. I probably should have stayed in the tunnels with Sergeant Kumar and the search team.
  So of course I found what I was looking for five minutes later, downstairs, while we were getting a statement from Zach.
  There was a cup of coffee waiting on the table for me. I sat down next to Carey but kept my posture relaxed, took my coffee, and leaned back slightly as I sipped it. Zach's hands were trembling and he was unconsciously rocking back and forth as we went through his movements in the last twenty-four hours. It's always useful to have your witnesses a little bit unnerved, but you can have too much of a good thing.
  An earthenware bowl was sitting on the kitchen table with two apples, a splotchy banana, and a handful of minicab cards inside it. It was the same rich biscuit color as the shard I'd found in the Underground but too curved to be an identical piece.
  I took another gulp of coffee, which was definitely the good stuff, and casually brushed my fingers along the rim of the bowl. There it was, fainter than the shard, heat and charcoal and what I realized was the smell of pig shit and...
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.. Start with the sentence 'I paused just to see his reaction but he was much smoother than his favorite-uncle-in-a-chunky-sweater persona suggested, and just looked blandly helpful'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I paused just to see his reaction but he was much smoother than his favorite-uncle-in-a-chunky-sweater persona suggested, and just looked blandly helpful.
  Beale took a fortifying gulp of Baileys and explained that unbreakable pottery was all very well but Eugene Beale and the surviving members of his butty gang drew upon their phenomenal tunneling experience to become engineering subcontractors in their own right. As the work became mechanized and the expendable masses were replaced by massive machines, each new generation of Beales were educated to meet the challenges of the new age.
  We stayed a bit longer to get contact details, so that a minion from the Murder Team could have a fun Christmas unpicking the corporate structure of Beale Property Services, just in case it became relevant later. I doubted it would be a priority—perhaps the minion would only have to give up New Year's Eve.
  We walked back to Stephanopoulos's BMW, picking our way through slippery patches of decomposing snow.
  Since the London Underground had only just got back to normal service after the snow, there was no way they were going to shut down the Circle Line while we explored. So we were going to wait until the official shutdown at one in the morning. Kumar suggested I get some rest and that we reconvene later to get tooled up.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last four paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I told him that was an absurd notion, not least because we'd never satisfy the health and safety requirements for running a troop of Girl Guides. Nightingale said that health and safety was not the point.
  Nightingale couldn't argue with the logic, but he put his foot down on one issue. "You are not to teach anybody magic," he said. "In the first instance you're far too reckless in who you expose to the art, and in the second you just aren't qualified to teach. Anyone learning from you is bound to pick up your sloppy form and those embellishments you find so amusing. So I want you to swear now, as my apprentice, that you will not pass on the art to another without my express permission."
  Which was a pity, I thought, badges might be fun: Fireball Proficiency, Werelight, Latin, and the ever-popular Fatal Brain Hemorrhage. "Do we have a deal or not?"
  On the way she asked if she could tell me something even if it sounded stupid and I reassured her that she could tell me anything. "And I promise not to laugh," I said. "Unless it's funny."