Broken Homes, book review. (Ben Aaronovitch)

This is part four of Ben Aaronovitch’s magical journey with the Met Police, and it’s a good one.

There are strange things happening in London, especially south of the river.

Why would a normal man, run a red light and crash into another car? Why did that same man kill a woman and leave her body in a shallow grave? Why would someone leave a tube station, only to walk back down to the platform and jump in front of a train? And why was a very rare and expensive, magical book, pawned at a bookshop of the Charring Cross road, having been stolen from an ex-practitioner's house in leafy Hampstead?

With some diligence, a bit of luck and a hell of a lot of help, Peter Grant and Lesley May manage to advance their magic, whilst: trying to track down the faceless man, avoid being killed by a homicidal Russian, Varvara Sidorovna, police the Spring Court for the God and Goddess of the Thames, protect the monstrosity that is the grade two listed tower at Skygarden, (an ugly concrete sky scrapper built by an eminent architect who designed the building to harness large quantities of magic), and walk the dog.

Sky, the wood nymph, dies when her trees are attacked. Abigail is taken on as an ad hoc apprentice. Molly works her way through one of Jamie Oliver’s cook books. The book thief is discovered at his house, cooked from the inside! Nightingale rescues Peter and Lesley from certain death and the Skygarden tower blow up with Peter standing on the roof.

Quite a lot happens then, and all wrapped up in a little over three hundred and fifty pages.

Well, this book is worth reading for the farm scene alone; it is one of the best scenes so far in this entire series. Nightingale steams into an already tense situation, where Peter and Lesley have been overpowered, and are about to die a very uncomfortable death at the hands of the not so friendly Varvara, but with much magic and trickery, Nightingale manages to wreck the barn, destroy a bungalow, capture the villains, and . . .

No, I’m not going to spoil it for you. I’m not even going to tell you why Lesley shots Peter in the back at the end. I’ll just let you read it for yourselves.

Four and half well deserved stars for this one then. On to book five: Foxglove Summer.

Moon over Soho, book review. (Ben Aaronovitch)

Oh I do love a quick dip into books about magic policing, chimeras and sex!

It's quite apt I think, that out of the first four books, this one is the most racy because it's set in Soho, and Soho is, or used to be, synonymous with sin.

That aside, we have another wonderful jaunt with P.C. Peter Grant, through the pitfalls of policing in the capital, whilst trying to practice magic, learn Latin, keep the status quo between the King and Queen of the Thames, and last but not least, catch criminals.

There's an illegal practitioner of magic in London, three girls who died when a bomb dropped on a jazz club in World War II, renting an apartment off of Denmark Street, and there's The Pale Lady; she bites men's penises off with her vagina.

The death of a journalist, who had the misfortune of meeting the Pale Lady, leads P.C. Grant on a journey of jazz venues, where he finds a group of musicians whose lead saxophonist has recently passed on, suspiciously. It turns out he's not the only one; after further investigation, it appears that quite a few jazz musicians have met with untimely deaths recently.
There are also people being magically spliced together with animals.

So, during this escapade, P.C. Grant steals an Ambulance, running amok through the streets of the West End - just managing to save his wards life by dumping him in the river - helps his friend and fellow P.C., Lesley May, (who lost her face in book one), come to terms with her disfigurement, whilst keeping the families of the Thames happy enough to avoid a turf war.

Just like with Rivers of London, I enjoyed this book a lot, and it is in fact, the second time I've read it.

It is funny, fast paced, original and at around four hundred pages, just the right length.

A four star book then, and on to book three, Whispers Underground.

Rivers of London, book review. (Ben Aaronovich)

I just had to re-read this classic series again, before book six came out. (Too late!)

It's been a few years now, and what with Rivers of London, Moon over Soho, Whispers Underground and Broken Homes, starting to blend into one, I sort of needed a refresher.

Well, I've finished book one and I'm half way through book two, and if anything, I'm liking them more now than the first time.

Ben Aaronovich paints a picture of the secret magical wing of the Metropolitan police force, (which consists of: one man - who is over a hundred years old - a vampire ghost, and an H.Q called The Folly), very convincingly, and then, P.C Grant starts talking to a ghost in Covent Garden and the Folly has a new recruit.

P.C. Peter Grant, who, up until that fateful night, was just a regular probationary constable, is our main character here. On the discovery of ghosts being real and their ability to inflict serious damage on the living, (our first victim is beheaded), our story begins.

The normal police take a very dim view of the Folly and its purpose, until an ancient malevolent ghost starts killing people that is. After that results are expected and expected fast.

Whilst spending a lot of the book discovering that magic is real, trying to learn it, (as well as Latin), P.C Grant, also finds himself embroiled in the middle of a feud between the mother and father of the river Thames. (Hence the book’s title).

With centuries of history and immense power between them, the two entities, along with their extended families, control all the river of London; the Thames of course being the biggest. With much fumbling, and only a small amount of destruction, our intrepid trainee magician, mediates the situation the best he can.

There is horror in this book, fun, laughter, genuine intrigue and as you tread the cobbles of one of the most famous placing in the world, (Covent Garden), you get trapped; trapped in a world of magic, policing, and fear, a world that hovers behind a thin veil between normality and fiction.

Exquisitely researched, so much so that I thought the author was a Jazz playing ex policeman, who wondered the streets of London of an evening, smoking something that could result in his arrest, and it’s fast paced too.
The chase at the end, with P.C Grant running through a London that gets magically younger, before finally disappearing altogether, going back to pre-Roman times, is just fantastic.

So, five big fat delicious stars for this book then, and with Moon over Soho under way, I'll be back in touch in a week or so with another update.

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