Number 58 - Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch

 I'm starting to think Magical London is it's own specific subgenre of fantasy fiction. there's the Smallest things book i read recently, Un-Lun-Dun and King Rat by China Mieville, Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, and the 8 books in this series to name a dozen off the top of my head.

This my first foray into this particular iteration on the theme and I have to say I'm impressed.

I was lead to believe that this was a Pratchett style high fantasy with a dozen laughs on each and every page. It's not that, but what it is is very good indeed.

Peter Grant is a young policeman just ending his two year probation and about to be posted into records rather than the excitement he wants on the streets.

He runs into an eyewitness to a recent brutal murder. The problem is that the eyewitness has been dead for 300 years.

This is the beginning of his awakening to the magic that surrounds his native city. 

He's recruited into a specialist unit instead, under Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale, who heads up his own very exclusive unit. Peter finds out that the serial killer the met is looking for is not the usual run of the mill murderer. In the course of his investigation he meets several more ghosts, at least one vampire and the human forms of the eponymous rivers of London who are themselves in the middle of their own internal fights which could cause trouble for the city.

There's a great imagination on display here. While I did say it's not Pratchett style. a dozen laughs a page funny, it is still very funny.  The plot comes before the humour though, and there are some very dark elements going on. Peter's narration is suitably cynical and does lead to a few belly laughs.

Aaronovitch clearly loves the London and the historical details about the city seem entirely convincing without feeling like a history lecture. The characters are well drawn, especially Grant, Leslie, and Nightingale. 

I was lucky enough to find a box set of all 8 books in the series for only £20 online. I will certainly be reading the full series There's a definite mystery linked to Nightingale's past that feels like it will be great fun to explore in the later volumes.