Rivers of London

The second novel in Aaronovitch's Peter Grant series takes the police constable cum apprentice magician into Soho and the world of jazz, where somebody seems to feed of the musician's vibes, while a black magician is expanding his territority.

My name is Peter Grant, and I'm a keeper of the secret flame. Truth be told, there's a lot I still don't know. My superior Nightingale is trying to teach me proper schooling for a magician's apprentice. But even he doesn't have all the answers. A mutilated body in Crawley means another murderer is on the loose. But then I get word of something very odd happening in Elephant and Castle. Just the typical day for a magician constable.

"When two young girls go missing in rural Herefordshire, police constable Peter Grant has to leave London to check that nothing supernatural is involved. It's purely routine, Nightingale thinks he'll be done in less than a day. But Peter's never been one to walk away from someone in trouble, so when nothing overtly magical turns up he volunteers his services to the local police, who need all the help they can get. But because the universe likes a joke as much as the next sadistic megalomaniac, Peter soon comes to realise that dark secrets underlie the picturesque fields and villages of the countryside and there might just be work for Britain's most junior wizard after all."

Suspicious deaths are not usually the concern of Police Constable Peter Grant or the Folly--London's police department for supernatural cases--even when they happen at an exclusive party in one of the flats of the most expensive apartment blocks in London. But the daughter of Lady Ty, influential goddess of the Tyburn river, was there, and Peter owes Lady Ty a favor. Plunged into the alien world of the super-rich, where the basements are bigger than the houses, where the law is something bought and sold on the open market, a sensible young copper would keep his head down and his nose clean. But this is Peter Grant we're talking about. He's been given an unparalleled opportunity to alienate old friends and create new enemies at the point where the world of magic and that of privilege intersect. Assuming he survives the week...

Detective Sergeant Peter Grant takes a much-needed holiday up in Scotland. And he'll need one when this is over. If more's the merrier, then it's ecstatic as his partner Beverley, their young twins, his mum, dad, his dad's band and their dodgy manager all tag along. Even his boss, DCI Thomas Nightingale, takes in the coastal airs as he trains Peter's cousin Abigail in the arcane arts.

"Meet Augustus Berrycloth-Young - flaneur extraordinaire and Englishman abroad - as he chronicles the Jazz Age from his perch atop the city that never sleeps. 'Gussie' is not one to shun shut-eye himself, however. But his peaceful luxuriation is about to be rudely awakened by the arrival of an unexpected guest. Enter his old friend Thomas Nightingale, who has braved the Atlantic passage pursuing the matter of a rather intriguing saxophone said to possess a strange power over those who play it. This deeply inconvenient affair will rouse Gussie from his warm bed for the cold shores of Long Island - and down to the jazz clubs of Harlem where music, magic, and madness haunt the shadows..."

"If you thought magic was confinied to one country...think again. Trier is famous for wine, Romans and for being Germany's oldest city. So when a man is found dead with his body covered in a fingal rot, the local authorities know they are out of their depth. Fortunately this is Germany, where there are procedures for everything. Enter Investigator Tobias Winter, whose aim is to get in, deal with the problem, and get out with the minimum of fuss, personal danger and paperwork. With the help of frighteningly enthusiastic local cop, Vanessa Sommer, he's quick to link the first victim to a group of ordinary middle-aged men - and to realise they may have accidentally reawakened a bloody conflict from a previous century. But the rot is still spreading, literally, and with the suspect list extending to people born before Frederick the Great, saolving the case may mean unearthing the city's secret magical history. ...so long as that history doesn't kill them first."

"When ex-FBI Agent Patrick Henderson calls in an 'X-Ray Sierra India' incident, the operator doesn't understand. He tells them to pass it up the chain till someone does. That person is Special Agent Kimberley Reynolds. Arriving in snowbound Northern Wisconsin, she finds that a tornado has flattened half the town - and there's no sign of Henderson. Things soon go from weird to worse as neighbours report unsettling sightings and the snow keeps rising - cutting off the town, with no way in or out... As the clues lead to the coldest of cold cases - a cursed expedition into the frozen wilderness - Reynolds follows a trail from the start of the American nightmare, to the horror that still lives on today..."