The book lays a glamour on a place I know well and turns it into somewhere I would like to know better. The plot is driven by the main character's insatiable curiosity to know how things work (I'm easily distracted) and his need to do whatever is necessary to preserve the Queen's Peace (we're the ones who run towards the screams) and powered by magic and evil. The mixed race background of the main character is used to draw out the multi-cultural nature of London and its long history of taking people from around the world and making them into Londoners within one generation. Wit is sprinkled like hotsauce throughout this books with references to contemporary fiction (Black Adder, Twilight, Harry Potter, Coronation Street), colourful similies, clever word play and a well-developed sense of the absurdity of daily life. The book is deeply rooted in contemporary, multicultural, London, with a strong sense of place and of history that is polished and intensified through the lens of the tongue-in-cheek political correctness of the Metropolitan Police, and garlanded with figures from London myth who are at once as modern and as ancient as the city itself. This book is a delight from start to finish (and it didn't take long to finish - I consumed the whole thing in two compulsion-driven days). Original, witty fantasy with deep roots in London The spirit of riot and rebellion has awakened in the city, and it's falling to me to bring order out of chaos - or die trying. Now I'm a Detective Constable and a trainee wizard, the first apprentice in 50 years, and my world has become somewhat more complicated: nests of vampires in Purley, negotiating a truce between the warring god and goddess of the Thames, and digging up graves in Covent Garden.and there's something festering at the heart of the city I love, a malicious, vengeful spirit that takes ordinary Londoners and twists them into grotesque mannequins to act out its drama of violence and despair.
Then one night, in pursuance of a murder inquiry, I tried to take a witness statement from someone who was dead but disturbingly voluble, and that brought me to the attention of Inspector Nightingale, the last wizard in England. My only concerns in life were how to avoid a transfer to the Case Progression Unit - we do paperwork so real coppers don't have to - and finding a way to climb into the panties of the outrageously perky WPC Leslie May. My name is Peter Grant, and until January, I was just probationary constable in that mighty army for justice known to all right-thinking people as the Metropolitan Police Service (and as the Filth to everybody else).
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