I read Rivers of
London around Halloween, but I never got around to posting my review. I
thought it would be a perfect read for the time of year, combining the
detective story with the fantasy genre. The plot basically revolves around a
gruesome series of murders with a supernatural origin. Some thing is causing normal residents of
London to go around brutally murdering each other. Police constable Peter Grant
is present at the scene of the first murder, and when his friend goes off to
get coffees for them both, a man walks up to Peter telling him he witnessed the
crime. Only there’s a bit of a catch: the witness is a ghost.
And thus Peter soon finds himself working for a division of
Scotland Yard that deals specifically with the supernatural. Only it’s not
quite what it sounds like: there are literally only two people, counting Peter,
working for this division, and it seems like half of Scotland Yard is in on the
secret. Either way, author Ben Aaronovitch manages to write a good story, which
isn’t quite fair-play detection but it isn’t in full cheat-the-reader mode
either.
