Thud! (2005)
Thud! is a 2005 fiction book written by Terry Pratchett.
Sam Vimes, Commander of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, faces two hard deadlines. One is a murder: a rabble-rousing dwarf found dead with a troll club conveniently beside him, days before the anniversary of Koom Valley, the ancient battle both races still claim as their own atrocity. The other is six o'clock every evening, when Vimes goes home to read Where's My Cow? to his son, no exceptions. As the city tips toward a dwarf-troll war, he has to solve one killing to stop a thousand. Pratchett folds a police procedural, old racial hatred, and fierce fatherhood into a single taut case.
Quick answers
What is Thud! about?
Sam Vimes, Commander of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, faces two hard deadlines. One is a murder: a rabble-rousing dwarf found dead with a troll club conveniently beside him, days before the anniversary of Koom Valley, the ancient battle both races still claim as their own atrocity. The other is six o'clock every evening, when Vimes goes home to read Where's My Cow? to his son, no exceptions. As the city tips toward a dwarf-troll war, he has to solve one killing to stop a thousand. Pratchett folds a police procedural, old racial hatred, and fierce fatherhood into a single taut case.
When was Thud! published?
Thud! was published on 13 October 2009.
Who made Thud!?
Thud! was written by Terry Pratchett.
Similar books
Thud! in our writing
- Companion guide: Discworld: The Complete Guide to Terry Pratchett's Flat Planet
A few thoughts on Thud!
Vimes belongs beside the great obsessive detectives. The Wire shares his sense that policing is really about a fractured city struggling to hold together. L.A. Confidential, whose author Pratchett half-credits in his own opening, brings the same corrupt streets and dogged cops. And Disco Elysium drops you inside a haunted, principled investigator very much cut from Vimes's cloth.
Crime dramas where the whole city is one wrong move from war
Thud! puts Sam Vimes on a murder clock while dwarfs and trolls edge toward citywide war over an old, disputed battle. Disco Elysium, The Wire and L.A. Confidential all run the same wire-taut version of policing, a case that is really about the fractures underneath a whole city. Rivers of London and The Godfather of Kathmandu add magic and a foreign beat to the same restless, procedural nerve.
More Sam Vimes and the Ankh-Morpork City Watch
Thud! is Vimes at his most stretched, six o'clock story time with his son on one side and a murder that could ignite a war on the other. Guards! Guards!, Men at Arms, Feet of Clay, The Fifth Elephant, Jingo, Night Watch and Snuff track the same commander through the rest of his career, while The Watch brings the squad room to the screen.
More Discworld, same sharp satire, different corner of the city
Thud! shows Pratchett's satire working through a police procedural, but the same instinct for skewering institutions runs across the whole Disc. Going Postal turns it on the postal service, The Truth on tabloid journalism, Hogfather on Christmas itself, and Monstrous Regiment on the military. Dodger takes Pratchett's eye for grubby, funny, decent people and drops it into a real Victorian London instead.