I'm a sucker for the old Amazon recommendations. I read a lot of different stuff, so sometimes they get a bit confused. That said, when someone I've never heard of shows up I generally pay at least some attention. When it's an "if you like X, you'll probably like Y" I pay more attention. And so, faced with "if you like Neil Gaiman, you'll probably like Ben Aaronovitch" I nodded my appreciation and downloaded this little beauty of a book.
"Rivers of London" (which you should read, by the way, so I'll try to avoid too many spoilers) is the first in what may turn out to be a lengthy series following the adventures of Peter Grant, a regular West End policeman. As it opens, he's guarding a police line at the scene of a murder, when he runs into a ghost. This leads to a chance meeting with Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale, and culminates in Grant becoming an apprentice wizard at The Folly, which is the section of the Met responsible for all things magical and supernatural. In the events that follow, he has to get to the bottom of a series of bloody murders involving many people's faces falling off. He also has to track down and kill a few vampires (of the non sparkly variety) and sort out a long running feud between the god and goddess who are in charge of different bits of the Thames. It's very witty, very creepy in places, and pretty much unputdownable. I attempted to get into two other books after reading this one, before saying "sod it" and downloading the sequel (which is called "Moon Over Soho" - don't go for "Midnight Riot" as this is merely the American title of "Rivers of London". Book 3 to come out next year dammit).
The book is clearly very well researched. Every detail about London is spot on, as far as I know. Most of the places within this book (and even more so in the case of the sequel) do actually exist, in the streets where they are supposed to be, and the interiors are accurate. Aaronovitch can sum up a whole area of London in a few pithy sentences. In "Moon Over Soho" he has some rather unflattering comments to make about Cheam, which were nonethelesss hilarious. Given that this is the case I suspect that his research into the workings of the Met is probably pretty accurate too, although obviously I don't know so much about this, being a small felt car.
The one thing which I don't like (and this is a very minor quibble) is the sometimes desperate self-referential attempts to be very clear that this is Not Like Other Urban Fantasy. It's unecessary, distracting and to be honest simply reminds you of parallels rather than distracting you. Like this (p45)
"So magic is real," I said. "Which makes you a. . . what?"
"A wizard."
"Like Harry Potter?"
Nightingale sighed. "No," he said, "not like Harry Potter."
"In what way?"
"I'm not a fictional character," said Nightingale.
Cringe. Not only is that a lamearse attempt to differentiate the two, put in for the benefit of the reader, but immediately you're set thinking "is this like Harry Potter? Is it a Pottery ripoff?" And the annoying thing is, it really isn't much like Harry Potter at all. It's certainly not a children's book, for one thing, and it has more in common with a regular thriller, but this exchange drags you out of an immersive storyline, reminds you that Nightingale is a fictional character, gets you to run a swift comparison and then when you're thoroughly distracted, lets you jump back in. Like I say, it's a minor quibble, and probably wouldn't annoy me if I didn't like the book so much.
Enough quibbling though. Truly it is an awesome read. Go forth and enjoy.
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