Finally a book that has enticed me enough to go after subsequent volumes in the series: Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch! Peter Grant is a probationary constable with London's Metropolitan Police. After learning to his dismay that his supervisors plan to put him into an all-paperwork job - Peter is perhaps a little too easily distractable for the Murder Unit - he just happens to speak to a ghost who is an eyewitness to a very strange and violent crime. Peter learns that the Met actually has a supernatural investigations division, headed by the mysterious Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale. Nightingale gets him transferred and soon Peter is learning magic, talking with river spirits and going through cellphones faster than you can say "Piccadilly Circus" as they try to discover, with help of Constable Leslie May and terrier Toby, who is behind a string of escalating murders.
Midnight Riot is an excellent entry in the mashed-up British detective/urban fantasy genre. Written in the first person, with Peter Grant as the sarcastic, interested and sometimes baffled narrator, it is a real page turner with plot advancements coming fast and furiously amid gently pointed and contemporary observations about London's traffic, tourists, police, weather and spicy West Indian food. I was charmed by Peter Grant and his magical, modern London and I will definitely be picking up the second book in the series, Moon Over Soho, in the near future.
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