Rivers of London / Ben Aaronovitch

The UK and US titles and covers

In a city as ancient as London there have to be a lot of spirits lurking about, so Peter Grant and his mentor are a sort of “odd squad” police unit that tackles the supernatural. A series of unexplained murders begins to mirror the plotline of a Punch and Judy script, and the investigation centers on Covent Garden and the Actors’ Church of St. Paul’s on the piazza. People are literally losing their heads over it, and by the end of the novel the market building at Covent Garden is in flames. The story is fresh, and the contemporary London setting is fascinating. Peter Grant is a well-developed character, full of London slang, sarcasm, and witticisms. This might just be Harry Potter for adults.

When we were in London this summer, this series of detective novels was prominently displayed in all the bookshops and newsagents. The cover art is certainly eye-catching. My wife’s curiosity got the better of her and she bought this title, the first in the series, not really knowing much about it. I picked it up and found it a compelling read with an interesting plotline (thought slightly nontraditional) and good characters. It’s a little X-files, but it’s a whole lot of fun. Published in the US as Midnight Riot.

9/7 Read Moon Over Soho which had a lot of Peter Grant in it since both Lesley and Inspector Nightingale were on medical leave. Interesting insight into Soho, what traditionally has been the "naughty" area of London. Also interesting tie-in to the Blitz and the London jazz scene.

The original UK cover images for the first three books.

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The Silent Patient / Alex Michaelides

A woman viciously murders her seemingly doting husband. We meet up with her several years later in a mental facility, where a therapist tries to get her to speak and to reveal her story. Who is innocent and who is the victim? The answer isn’t straightforward. The resolution to the novel features a real twist that will have the reader questioning the chronology of the different narrative threads in the book. A real page-turner.

Transient Desires / Donna Leon

Book 30 of the Guido Brunetti mystery series. I haven’t read them all, but enough to enjoy a visit back with a familiar character in a setting I love. Two female American college students are left wounded and unconscious outside the hospital emergency room in the middle of the night. Brunetti soon discovers who left them there, but the question remains why? The plot involves a nephew indebted to his criminal and abusive uncle, and illegal human trafficking. The book ends rather abruptly, and you may get the sense that after twenty-nine installments of the series, the author might just be phoning it in. Nevertheless, this book represented a nice little trip back to a Venice where real people live and work, and this to me is never a waste of time. I downloaded this to my iPad.

Murder in Passy, An Aimée Leduc Investigation / Cara Black

If you like your mysteries set in European locales, here’s a Parisian detective series that is sure to please. Aimée Leduc is a private eye, born of a French career detective and an absentee American mother (brief hints of angst over this in this installment). She’s appeared in about ten adventures, always set in iconic Parisian neighborhoods : Murder in the Marais, Murder in the Bastille, Murder in Montmartre, and Murder in the Latin Quarter , to name a few. In Murder in Passy (Paris’s tony XVIe arrondissement), Aimée finds herself mixed up in a murderous intrigue involving the French arm of the Basque nationalist movement. The final chase involves the kidnapping of a Spanish princess, a secret torture chamber used by the Gestapo in WWII, and a rooftop escape. The author sprinkles enough French words into the dialogue to either annoy you or make you feel your French 101 was not for nothing— Zut alors! très chic, c’est parfait, désolé, c’est tout! Oh, and Aimée’s frequent stop...

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