Rivers of London is my first "Twitter book", which is to say that after reading so many great tweets about it, the first time I saw it in a shop I couldn't stop myself buying it.
The twitterati did not let me down. The Rivers of London is an exuberant, imaginative literary trip that introduces a refreshing and almost anarchic paranormal twist into the police procedural novel.
PC Peter Grant is a probationary officer in the Metropolitan Police whose career looks to be over before it's even started as he is given a posting at the administrative graveyard known as the Case Progression Unit.
Grant is rescued by a ghost, who approaches him while he is guarding the scene of a vicious crime in Covent Garden and tells the PC that he witnessed the event. Initially bewildered and confused, Grant later returns to the scene to see if he can find the ghost again. Instead he finds Inspector Nightingale who, to his surprise, he discovers is trying also trying to gather information about the crime from the spirit world.
The meeting with Nightingale transforms Grant's career prospects and turns his life upside down. Suddenly he finds himself a part of the Metropolitan Police's smallest and most secret unit: investigating the paranormal as part of "The Agreement" an unexplained pact that gives Nightingale (a one-man band until Grant arrives) his legitimacy and authority.
Grant moves in to Nightingale's quarters, a vast magically protected building in Bloomsbury known as The Folly and begins his training as a wizard. This runs alongside the investigation into the Covent Garden murder, which Nightingale and Grant discover might be the work of a former actor playing out his own macabre version of the story of Mr Punch.
Along the way Nightingale introduces grant to the many mystical and supernatural powers at work in London from ghosts and vampires to the human embodiments of the rivers of London, the children of Old Father Thames and Mother Thames. Their off-spring - Tyburn, Fleet, Lea etc - are engaged in a turf war that Nightingale and Grant are expected to manage.
As the first novel of an intended series there is a huge amount of information, characters and ideas to absorb, and the novel occasionally reads as a series of short stories tied together by the Punch investigation. It is no worse for this. The world Aaronovitch has created and painted on to a familiar London backdrop (lovingly brought to life) is so rich in character, history and atmosphere that every diversion is fascinating and entertaining.
Grant, fighting to come to terms with his circumstances while also revelling in them, is a witty, likable and entertaining narrator. Nightingale is the keeper of mystery, drip-feeding insight into this strange new world both to Grant and the reader.
The combination is highly effective and they drive the narrative to its chaotic maelstrom of a conclusion, leaving this reader at least wanting a lot more and very much looking forward to the next installment.
