The fourth book is Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series of urban fantasy/police procedurals is another winner.
London Police Constable Peter Grant and his mentor, Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale, officially constitute the London Metropolitan Police Specialist Crime Unit aka The Folly. Established by Sir Issac Newton himself, the Folly was the home of the Newtonian School of British Wizardry in the service of King and Country for four centuries, until a cataclysmic World War II battle against Nazi magic decimated the ranks. Nightingale, the sole survivor, carried on alone in the belief that magic was dying out of the world anyway.
Until with the new century magic is making a comeback, and there is at least one renegade practitioner of magic --- the "Faceless Man" --- with no allegiance to anyone but himself on the loose in London. And so Nightingale acquires his first apprentice in the person of Peter Grant, a very 21st century kind of police officer with an attitude towards authority and a demonstrable talent for magic.
Peter and Nightingale are working their way through a list of potential suspects when they are called on an otherwise routine traffic accident that leads them to a faceless corpse. In quick succession, a Southwark Council employee throws himself under a train, a breakin at a National Trust property is tied to the heist of a classic text of German magic, and the suspected burglar is discovered roasted from the inside out. And all these events seem to be linked to the proposed demolition of one of the last of the postwar Council high rise housing projects (designed by a mad German architect with possible ulterior motives) in the Elephant and Castle neighborhood of South London.
The cusotmary showdown at the end gets a twist that will shock and surprise series admirers, but it's clear that Broken Homes will not be the last of PC Grant's adventures, and that is reason enough to rejoice. A great new series, irreverent, intelligent, scathingly funny. Aaronovitch stands ready to inherit the crown from Terry Pratchett for comic fantasy at its finest.
Click HERE to check out Ben Aaronovitch's web site.
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