My brother-in-law texted me asking me if I had read the Rivers of London series. He has been on a binge since this whole *waves hands wildly around* thing started. I had not read it and he described it to me as if Harry Potter had graduated and became a cop on CSI. I was sold, of course, and my brother-in-law has never steered me wrong. I looked at the waitlist for the first book at the library (six months) and immediately shelled out $7.99 to get a Kindle version.
Midnight Riot by Been Aaronovitch is called Rivers of London everywhere in the world that is not the United States. It tells us the story of Constable Peter Grant, who is a relatively new recruit to the world of policing and he soon finds himself assigned to work with Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale, an investigator of all things mystical and uncanny. This is obviously and unexpected career move for Grant and, as you can guess, shenanigans ensue.
I thought it was a delightful little read, to be honest. Aaronovitch clearly loves London and the city plays a pivotal role in the story. I like that Grant is learning the rules of magic as he goes along and I like that there do appear to be rules. It's not as easy as just saying a magical spell and hoping everything gets fixed immediately.
Aaronovitch gets some criticism for his portrayal of particular minorities in the book and all I can say is that it mostly just read to me like someone who lived in a place with minorities, absorbed some stereotypes based on interactions in particular places (like markets and restaurants) and then wrote about those experiences. Does that make Aaronovitch a racist? It doesn't read that way to me and I'm willing to give him another book or two to prove me wrong. There are eight books in the series and I'm happy to wait for the next book to come in to the library.
Lines of note:
The lady who met us a the top did not have blue-rinsed hair; actually, I'm not sure what blue-rinsed hair would look like and why anyone would think blue hair was a good idea in the first place? Nor did she have fingerless mittens or too many cats, but there was something about her that suggested both could be serious lifestyle choices in the future. (page 33)
"So magic is real," I said. "Which makes you a...what?
"A wizard."
"Like Harry Potter?"
Nightingale sighed. "No," he said. "Not like Harry Potter."
"In what way?"
"I'm not a fictional character," said Nightingale. (page 34)
...if I started avoiding certain streets just because somebody's died on them I'd have to move to Aberystwyth. (page 161)
In the postwar years, these sites were gradually cleared and rebuilt as a series of ghastly architectural mistakes. (page 262)
Things I looked up (mostly having to do with the fact that I clearly don't know my British history):
kedgeree (page 69): 1. an Indian dish composing chiefly of rice, lentils, onions, and eggs 2. a European dish consisting chiefly of fish, rice, and hard-boiled eggs
gnomic (page 85): expressed in or of the nature of short, pithy maxims or aphorisms
loth (page 159): it's an unusual/archaic spelling of "loathe"
Inigo Jones (page 166): The first significant English architect of the early modern period and the first to apply Vitruvian rules of proportion and symmetry to his buildings. I looked up some of his work and it's very pleasing to me in its symmetric ways.
Elizabeth Barton (page 182): An English nun who was executed because of her prophecies against the marriage of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.
Gentleman Jack (page 182): Mystifying. I still don't quite understand this reference. It's in a section about people who were hanged in a gallows, but I can't figure out who this refers to. According to Wikipedia, Gentleman Jack could be Anne Lister, a diarist who wrote about her daily life, including her sex life (in code!), but Lister died of a fever. It could be a WWE wrestler, but that doesn't make sense in this context. Anyone who knows what this means, hit me up.
James Hackman (page 182): A military/religious man of the 1700s who killed Martha Ray, a singer who was the mistress of the Earl of Sandwich. He was hanged as punishment.
William Joyce, Lord Haw Haw (page 196): US-born Briton who broadcast Nazi propaganda to the UK from Germany during World War II. He was eventually hanged for treason.
Kray twins (page 197): Ronald "Ronnie" Kray and Reginald "Reggie" Kray, who were early mobsters of the East End of London in the 1950s and 1960s.
Jack "the Hat" MacVitie (page 197): A member of the Kray twins' gang who turned against the Kray brothers and was responsible for their imprisonments. Was murdered by Reggie Kray in 1967.
Thomas De Veil (page 198): Bow Street's first magistrate - the Aaronovitch book claims that he was incredibly corrupt, but the Wikipedia page suggests that there's no evidence for such a reputation. Interesting.
(as I was reading De Veil's Wikipedia page, I also had to look up the word denizenated - it means to become a denizen/citizen/naturalized)
pilum (page 283): a Roman military javelin
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