Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Occult London is built out of what London believes about itself.City of the Damned: Under the rule of the Smiling Man, Hell is a facsimile of Victorian era London.The Chains of Commanding: As the characters note in Who Killed Sherlock Holmes?, Quill, as the team's leader, is the one least able to lean on his colleagues' support and help, and is therefore the first to crack under the phenomenal stress they're all under.However, he is actually there to deliver Quill into an ambush. Neil Gaiman arrives to pick him up in a car and spirit him away. Cavalry Betrayal: In The Severed Streets, Quill is being pursued by the Ripper.

This shows that they understand very little about the actual supernatural world, and are running mostly on partly-remembered rituals and traditions. Burn the Witch!: In Who Killed Sherlock Holmes?, the Circle of Hands includes a symbolic witch-burning as part of the ceremony to open their conference.Blow Gun: In Who Killed Sherlock Holmes?, the killer recreates the scene from The Sign Of Four by shooting one the victims with a poison dart from a blowgun.While not necessarily evil, the auctions are definitely amoral and will accept all kinds of disturbing things as payment: blood, body parts, a year of suicidal depression, the ability to ever feel happiness. Auction of Evil: In The Severed Streets, Costain and Ross discover that there is a quarterly auction of arcane artifacts in London - held on the solstices and the equinoxes - and attend one.As Himself: Neil Gaiman (with his involvement and permission) is a supporting character in The Severed Streets.Rebecca Lofthouse - Quill's superior, now one of the gang Lisa Ross, a police intelligence analyst - The Smart Guy.DS Tony Costain - The Lancer, The Big Guy.A Broken Masquerade ensued, and now they're bringing their police training to bear on London's paranormal threats as the city's Occult Detectives. when they suddenly got cursed with True Sight. Four normal cops in modern London were investigating a London Gangster with an uncanny success rate. Ongoing series of Urban Fantasy Police Procedural by Paul Cornell.

The severed streets