To make up for the dearth of blog posts this year, I’m returning to my twelve days of Christmas book recommendations: a daily blog throughout the rest of December in which I share with you the twelve best books I read during 2017, counting down to the best of them all on Christmas Eve.
As always, these aren’t all books published this year but they are all books that I would heartily recommend you go out and buy or borrow. (That was a sneaky prompt to use your local library.)
Let’s see what my sixth favourite book was in 2017…
Rivers of London AND (bonus!) Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch
Last year, my dearest friend, Ally, gave me the most incredible birthday present a book lover could dream of: she asked a group of friends to tell her one book that they’ve really loved or that has been influential in their life and then she bought a copy of each and wrapped them up with a little introduction about that friend. I had a stack of ten books, all handpicked by our friends. Great, huh?
Nearly two years on, I have only read one of these books because I am too scared to have read them all and to have finished my lovely gift. I know this is irrational. However, the one book I have read – the first book in Ben Aaronovitch’s fantasy crime series, Rivers of London – was a cracker. I enjoyed it so much, I’ve already read the second in the series, Moon Over Soho, and plan to read all the others, even though I do not do series of books. That’s about the strongest recommendation you’ll get from me.
There’s just something really engaging about these books though. I think it’s probably the protagonist, Peter Grant, a relatively green police constable in the Met, that I like and want to read more about.
In the first novel, Peter is on foot patrol one night when he encounters a ghost in Covent Garden. The encounter sets him off on a quite unexpected course: he is recruited into a secret branch of the Met…which deals with crimes of magic. As he begins his unusual apprenticeship, Peter finds himself trying to solve two grisly cases, whilst becoming accustomed to all things supernatural.
The novels are also completely saturated in the culture and geography of London; I have read few English novels that feel as strongly located in their place as these. In the first book, Aaronovitch draws on the mythology of the Thames and London’s other rivers to create a world of warring river gods and goddesses and, in the second book, Moon Over Soho, the history of the city’s jazz scene takes centre stage.
The books are also very, very funny, surprising and inventive. They are fast paced, hard to put down and will make you think again about going back to your run of the mill police procedural.
