My best friend and her husband are massive fans of Ben Aaronovitch‘s books, so I thought I‘ll give them a go as well. Rivers of London is the first book in a series of these detective novels. When I heard detective novels my ears pricked up as I love detective stories, but this one is kind of different. 

Peter Grant is a trainee police officer. He is very close to his co-worker Lesley. After an unexpected encounter with a ghost, Peter gets recruited by the ‘special branch’ of the Metropolitan Police. There he meets his new mentor Thomas Nightingale. He moves into his mansion where he is teaching him the beginnings of magic or wizardry. When Nightingale gets shot, Peter is left to solve the case by himself. The ghost inhabits different people and uses their bodies to enact a Punch and Julie story. In the end the people he inhabits, die. When the ghosts inhabits his co-worker Leslie’s body things starting to heat up.

The book is called Rivers of Lonodn as Peter has to ask the different rivers of London for help. The rivers can have a human form and by the end of the book it is also his task to help to make peace between the rivers of the two sides of London.

I didn’t find this story easy to follow. A ghosts as a murderer is one side which I may have been able to follow on it’s own, but then the river side of the story I found very confusing. This may be just me, as I prefer a straight forward murder story and like I said the ghost bit and the magic bit on it’s own would have been great, but to throw in the river stuff almost spoiled it for me. Of course the rivers help him to solve the müderes, but he would have done it on his own 😉 

I got the second book as well and will read it, but I am somewhat reluctant about this book.