"Simon R. Green - Nightside 1 - Drinking Midnight Wine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Green Simon R)

came back when he threw it. The hammer had once been Thor's, and in its day had changed the fate
of men and nations. It was his only material inheritance. It stirred in its sleep in its holster,
snoring quietly. Mjolnir was a good weapon, but it was getting old and forgetful. Forged from
stone or crystal or metal at the dawn of Time, or perhaps from some starstuff that no longer
existed in the material world, Mjolnir was not what it once was. It was created to be immortal, a
weapon that would endure till Ragnarok or Judgement Day; but nothing lasts for ever. Ask Thor, if
you can find his body.
Jimmy Thunder was the only private eye in Bradford-on-Avon, in reality or otherwise, and he had a
reputation for getting things done, whatever the cost. During his long life he'd investigated many
cases, both mundane and bizarre, and his unwavering pursuit of the truth had seen to it that a lot
of not very nice people had good reasons for wanting him dead. Just as well he was a god, really.
Even if he did have to chase after his hammer sometimes. He poured the last of the hot sweet tea
out of his Thermos and into the plastic cup, and sipped at it carefully. It was still pleasantly
warming, but not nearly bracing enough for the early hours of a very cold morning, so he goosed it
up a bit with a tiny lightning bolt from his index finger. The wind had no damn business being so
disturbingly cold this deep into summer, but then the weather had been strange of late; whimsical,
almost wilful. Jimmy was quietly hoping someone would hire him to look into that.
Not that he was complaining about the cold, or the early hour of the morning. Jimmy liked stake-
outs, especially when there was a fair chance of a little hurly-burly in the offing. Smiting the
ungodly was right up there on his list of favourite things. He lived to the hilt the role he had
chosen, and the more he played it, the less like play it was. A god became a private eye, and an
old myth became a new. Jimmy believed in progress. It's always the legends which cannot or will
not change that wither and fade away. Faced with being just another minor deity in a long line of
godlings, with no fixed role or future in the modern world, Jimmy had cheerfully embraced a
different destiny. The first time he saw a private investigator at the cinema,


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solving impossible crimes and pursuing awful villains, while surrounded by dizzy dames and femmes
fatales, he knew that that was what he wanted to be. It helped that his long life gave him plenty
of time to learn from his mistakes, while his divine abilities kept him alive while he learned.
Jimmy liked to know things, and had an insatiable hunger for the truth. Especially things other
people didn't want him to know. He had no time for subterfuge, always preferring to meet things
head-on. He had a fondness for the underdog, and a real weakness for damsels in distress, and if
he had a fault it was his constant determination to follow a case through to the bitter end,
revealing every last truth or secret, come what may. He never could bring himself to accept that
while his clients always said they wanted to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the
truth, they didn't always mean it. Not when lies or evasions can be so much more comforting.
Jimmy always got to the bottom of a case, but he wasn't always thanked for his trouble.
Sometimes cases ended messily. As in the case of Count Dracula's mandolin, where no one got what
they wanted, and everyone got hurt - even him. And sometimes Jimmy went into cases knowing from
the start that it was all going to end in tears. The Lord of Thorns still hadn't forgiven Jimmy
for proving his fiancee was a golem. But if he'd made enemies, he'd made friends too. Even the
Vatican owed him a favour.
(A few years back, Jimmy had been called in by the Pope to investigate a curious case where all
the statues in the Vatican had spontaneously started bleeding from vivid stigmata. They'd had to
close everything down, and run superhuman damage control to keep it out of the media. All the top-