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Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch: book review



Rivers of London (2011) is set in London in contemporary times. Peter Grant is a probationary police constable called to duty when a murder occurred on the steps of St. Paul’s Church in Covent Garden, London. The first witness he interviews about the murder of William Skirmish is the 120-year-old ghost of Nicholas Wallpenny. When viewing the CCTV footage, the police have two suspects. The ghost has told Grant that there was only one person – the murderer changed clothes. So what does Grant do?

With the help of his female partner, Police Constable Lesley May, and his new boss, Inspector Thomas Nightingale, the action takes them along the rivers of London. Grant has a good sense of smell, and May is good at checking facts on the police database. Grant gets his first lesson in magic in the laboratories with Nightingale. Here readers learn of vestigium (the trace of clues), tactus disvitae (the smell of anti-life), dissimulo (the hidden), and in fact the Principia Artes Magicis (the Principles of the Art of Magic).

Aaronovitch wrote two serials for the BBC ‘Doctor Who’ series, and his novels are enormous best-sellers. Rivers of London, the first of the Peter Grant police series, is difficult to classify. It is part police thriller, part fantasy, part magical realism, part scientific, and part travelogue. I am not a fan of the magic genre, and this novel has not convinced me to be a fan. Yet, I liked it.

Rivers of London is witty and humorous with a distinct style and language, especially the voice of Peter Grant. It blends traditional police investigations, procedures and problem-solving (realism) – which I like – with a bizarre sense of the unreal (magic) – which  I don’t like. However, I particularly like the way Aaronovtich sets a very vivid pictorial view and history of the streets, shops, river, bars, and churches of London.

But I am still not convinced. That’s because setting police investigations in the phantasmagoria means that the writer can conjure up any solutions to a ‘crime’ - no matter how far-fetched and fantastical. Overall there was nothing memorable about the plot – but the main character and the location were memorable (London is the real star in this novel). And it’s too long. It needs an edit. Nevertheless, I would highly recommend Rivers of London to readers who love a well-crafted yarn with a unique experimental style that is very readable.


MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).


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