The October Man by Ben Aaronovitch

The October Man: A Rivers of London Novella by Ben Aaronovitch --- 209 pages

From Google Books: With this long new novella, bestselling author Ben Aaronovitch has crafted yet another wickedly funny and surprisingly affecting chapter in his beloved Rivers of London series.

If you thought magic was confined to one country—think again. Trier: famous for wine, Romans and being Germany's oldest city. When a man is found dead with his body impossibly covered in a fungal rot, the local authorities know they are out of their depth. But fortunately this is Germany, where there are procedures for everything.

Enter Tobias Winter, an investigator for the Abteilung KDA, the branch of the German Federal Criminal Police that handles "Complex and Diffuse Matters" --- ie., the supernatural. Tobias' aim is to get in, deal with the problem, and get out with the minimum of fuss, personal danger and paperwork.

Together with a frighteningly enthusiastic local cop, Vanessa Sommer, he quickly links the victim to a group of ordinary middle-aged men whose novel approach to their mid-life crisis may have reawakened a bloody conflict from a previous century and attracted the attention of a vengeful river goddess. As the rot spreads, literally, and the suspect list extends to people born before Frederick the Great, Tobias and Vanessa will need to find allies in some unexpected places. And to solve the case they'll have to unearth the secret magical history of a city that goes back two thousand years.

Presuming that history doesn't kill them first. An intriguing new spin off from Aaronovitch's previous canon.  Good fantasy isn't easy to do, and comic fantasy is a very rare beast indeed.  Aaronovitch delivers the goods!

Click HERE to read the review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from Locus Magazine.

Click HERE to read the review from Fantastic Fiction.com.

Click HERE to read the review from Track of Words.com.

The Furthest Station by Ben Aaronovitch

The Furthest Station by Ben Aaronovitch --- 136 pages including an Interview with Ben Aaronovitch

A novella that fits between Foxglove Summer and The Hanging Tree in Aaronovitch's wonderful Rivers of London series combining fantasy, mystery and police procedural.

It's hardly surprising that a city of great antiquity like London would have more than its share of ghosts. Some of them even ride the Underground; but rarely do they interact with mortal commuters. So when the police start getting reports about aggressive specters confronting passengers on the Metropolitan Line, the authorities summon PC Peter Grant and his supervisor, Inspector Nightingale, of the Specialised Assessment Unit aka The Folly. With the assistance of Peter’s teenage cousin Abigail (spending the summer as an intern at The Folly to keep her out of trouble) and Jaget Kumar of the British Transport Police, they take to the trains hunting ghosts to try and get to the bottom of this mystery.

The problem though, is that their witnesses' memories of these encounters fade away within minutes. And the ghosts themselves, if they can be tracked down and confronted, disintegrate on the spot. But with sheer dogged persistence, eventually Peter pieces together enough clues to hypothesize what could be causing this behavior. And soon they have confirmation. A young woman has disappeared. If Perter's theory is right, her life is in imminent danger. If Peter is right, only he and Nightingale have the necessary skills to find and rescue her before it's too late.

Another suspenseful and comic adventure in urban fantasy.

Click HERE to read the review from Publisher's Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from Locus Magazine.

Click HERE to read the review from the Sci-Fi and Fantasy Reviews blog/

The Hanging Tree by Ben Aaronovitch

The Hanging Tree: A Rivers of London Novel by Ben Aaronovitch --- 292 pages

Book Six in the Rivers of London has been a long time coming but is definitely worth the wait. Our hero, London Police Constable Peter Grant (apprentice wizard of the Metropolitan Police's Falcon Squad under the command of Superintendent Nightingale) gets seconded into a drug overdose case in the exclusive Knightsbridge neighborhood of London when it turns out one of the suspects is the daughter of the formidable Lady Ty, Goddess of the Tyburn River.  Peter's interest ticks up when he finds cause to suspect that the Faceless Man, nemesis of all practitioners of the order of Sir Isaac Newton, is involved in the crime. With side forays into Peter's current relationship with Beverley Brook, another of the Rivers family, his new police partner Sahra Guleed, and tantalizing glimpses of his former partner Lesley May (now gone over to the dark side), and Peter's running commentary on police procedure amid the dizzying diversity of modern London. Plus the usual blend of explosions, buildings collapsing, sudden fires, flash floods, riots and weird bollocks that follows Peter wherever he goes. 

If you are not familiar with the series, then go back and start with  Book One. Highly recommended to all fans of snarky British humor, police procedurals, magic, folklore, fantasy, and the history of London neighborhoods.

Click HERE for a review from tor.com.

Click HERE for a review from Speculative Herald.com.

Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch

Foxglove Summer: A Rivers of London Novel by Ben Aaronovitch ---325 pages

Book Five in The Rivers of London Series. Two young girls go missing in rural Hertfordshire. There doesn't seem to be anything particularly suspicious --- in the supernatural sense --- involved, but Chief Inspector Peter Nightingale of the Folly, the Metropolitan Police's last thin line of defense against magical crime --- is concerned because the scene of this crime is right on the doorstep of a long retired and dormant wizard. Just to be on the safe side, he sends his assistant, wizard-in-training Constable Peter Grant to check out the situation.

Peter quickly concludes that retired wizard, Hugh Oswald, is not involved in the case of the missing children. He realizes however that Hugh could provide answers to some of the questions Peter has about Nightingale's past.  Also some nagging seventh sense makes Peter suspect that even if Hugh is not, something preternatural could be mixed up in the disappearance of best friends Hannah Marstowe and Nicole Lacey. So Peter volunteers to stay in Hertfordshire to assist with the search for the missing girls.

Aaronovitch has a happy knack for applying Monty Pythonesque humor to a modern police procedural constructed upon a foundation of British folklore, and making the whole crazy structure sound completely plausible.  Previous books in the series have been set in London and the last one left us with a major cliffhanger; but Foxglove Summer takes Peter out of his urban element for a "busman's holiday" in the British countryside.  It provides a bit of a break in the ratcheting tension of the story arc, and an opportune moment to fill in some of the Nightingale back story.  It also gives Peter a chance to show his mettle; no longer a mere apprentice but now a journeyman wizard, capable of coping with homicidal unicorns, devious changlings, and media circuses on his own.

Click HERE to read a review from Ellen Bourne's blog.

Click HERE to read a review from Tor.com.

Click HERE to read a review from the Fantasy Faction web site.

Broekn Homes by Ben Aaronovitch

Broken Homes: A Rivers of London Novel by Ben Aaronvitch --- 324 pages

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.

Whispers Underground by Ben AaronovitchEach of

Whispers Underground by Ben Aaronovitch --- 303 pages

This is the third volume in Aaronovitch's urban fantasy series The Rivers of London.
Each of Aaronovitch's novels has focused on a particular London neighborhood; in this one we get to explore the London Underground --- both the famous underground transport service and the equally famous underground sewers.

It begins when a wealthy American art student, James Gallagher, is found stabbed to death with a shard of old-fashioned pottery, at the far end of the Baker Street tube station. Constable Peter Grant of the Specialist Crimes Unit is called in on the case because the surveillance cameras in the station don't explain how Gallagher and his killer got into the station or how the killer got out after the murder. Peter is the apprentice of Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale, the last registered wizard in England, and the SCU is only called in on "uncanny" crimes. The pressure is on  because Gallagher's wealthy and politically prominent father (a U.S. Senator) wants to know how his son wound up dead.

There are futher complications: Gallagher's slacker flatmate turns out to be Fae and as slippery as they come. An ambitious FBI agent (and a born-again Christian with strong views about magic and the supernatural) has been assigned to "assist" the Metropolitan police in their inquiries. Two of Mama Thames' demigoddess daughters are running an unlicensed rave club in the old tunnels. Then there's Peter's fellow constable and friend Lesley, badly disfigured in a previous encounter with the uncanny, trying to revive her once promising career by joining up with Nightingale and Peter.

A wonderful concantation of folklore, urban legend, fantasy and forensics.

Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch

Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch --- 288 pages

This is the second volume in Aaronovitch's urban fantasy series, The Rivers of London, featuring London police constable (and wizard in training) Peter Grant and his mentor, Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale, head of the London Metropolitan Police Special Crimes Unit that deals with the strange and inexplicable.

Peter is assigned to investigate the strange and inexplicable death of Cyrus Wilkins, an accountant and part-time drummer, who dropped dead of a heart attack for no apparent reason in the middle of a gig at a Soho jazz club. The first thing Peter notices when he examines the corpse is the music he hears surrounding the body: the great jazz classic, "Body and Soul." That's called vestigia, and it's a big flashing neon alert that Cyrus' death was supernaturally induced.

At about the same time, Peter and Nightingale become aware of strange creatures half-human, half-beast, preying on visitors to the clubs and bars of Soho. With the help of Ash Thames, one of the minor gods of the London Rivers, and a beautiful groupie named Simone who keeps turning up in the vicinity of murdered jazz musicians, Peter and Nightingale begin to close in on a renegade wizard, an "ethically challenged" practioner of the magical arts.    Great fun for fans of urban fantasy and the paranormal.

Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch

Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch --- 298 pages

Peter Grant is a young mixed race constable in modern London. He's disappointed his family by flunking out of the advanced science courses that could have led to a university degree and successful career, because he has a tendancy to be too easily distracted by odd little details at critical moments. Now that same distraction could wind up relegating him to a back office job shuffling paperwork instead of the CID assignment he craves. Then he gets involved in the investigation of a seemingly random murder in Covent Garden, by obtaining a key piece of evidence from an eye witness --- who happens to be a ghost.

When the ghost lead pans out, Peter finds himself seconded to the Met's Specialist Crime Unit under the command of Chief Inspector Peter Nightingale, the Metropolitan's expert on matters seelie and unseelie, and the last practicing Wizard in London, of the school of wizardry established by Sir Isaac Newton. (Yes, that Sir Isaac Newton.) Nightingale undertakes to train Peter's supernatural apptitude as his apprentice in magic and criminal investigation.

It appears that the malevolent spirit of a murdered nineteenth century actor is taking over the minds of ordinary law-abiding citizens and orchestrating a series of violent assaults in the neighborhood of Covent Garden. The rampage culminate in a murderous attack on Nightingale that leaves Peter to cope on his own when the spirit commandeers a performance at the Royal Opera House and sends the performers and patrons out rioting in the streets.

As if he doesn't have enough on his plate, Peter also has to mediate a jurisdictional dispute between Mother and Father Thames before it results in a complete breach of the Queen's Peace. Aaronovitch not only knows his way around British Faerie and the history of magic and the occult, but the day-to-day inner workings of the Metropolitan Police, and just how to play one off against the other for comic effect. He looks like an excellent canddiate to join that very select group of writers who write really funny fantasy.

This is the first book in the Rivers of London series of urban fantasies.  Other books in the series are: Moon Over Soho, Whispers Underground, and Broken Homes (due to be published in the U.S. in February 2014).

A rollicking tale recommended to those who enjoy urban fantasy like Jim Butcher's Dresden Files or Charlaine Harris' True Blood (the books not the TV series), Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Aaronovitch has also written a number of award-winning scripts for BBC programs Dr. Who on television and Blake's Seven on radio. He lives in London.

Check out his web site at www.the-folly.com.