I was my dad's vinyl-wallah: I changed his records while he lounged around drinking tea, and that's how I know my Argo from my Tempo. And it's why, when Dr Walid called me to the morgue to listen to a corpse, I recognised the tune it was playing. Something violently supernatural had happened to the victim, strong enough to leave its imprint like a wax cylinder recording. Cyrus Wilkinson, part-time jazz saxophonist and full-time accountant, had apparently dropped dead of a heart attack just after finishing a gig in a Soho jazz club. He wasn't the first.
No one was going to let me exhume corpses to see if they were playing my tune, so it was back to old-fashioned legwork, starting in Soho, the heart of the scene. I didn't trust the lovely Simone, Cyrus' ex-lover, professional jazz kitten and as inviting as a Rubens' portrait, but I needed her help: there were monsters stalking Soho, creatures feeding off that special gift that separates the great musician from someone who can raise a decent tune. What they take is beauty. What they leave behind is sickness, failure and broken lives.
And as I hunted them, my investigation got tangled up in another story: a brilliant trumpet player, Richard 'Lord' Grant - my father - who managed to destroy his own career, twice. That's the thing about policing: most of the time you're doing it to maintain public order. Occasionally you're doing it for justice. And maybe once in a career, you're doing it for revenge.
Near-fine first edition with some light bruising to spine and small bump to top front corner. Some white marking to edges of boards and some foxing to page block. In a near-fine unclipped jacket with some wear to edges.
All of our books that a have dust wrapper are covered in clear protective, removable film and are packed professionally in bubble wrap and a box for shipping so that they reach you in perfect condition.
Ben Aaronovitch was born in London in 1964 and had the kind of dull routine childhood that drives a man either to drink or to science fiction.
He is a screenwriter, with early notable success on BBC’s legendary Doctor Who, for which he wrote some episodes now widely regarded as classics, and which even he is quite fond of.
After a decade of such work, he decided it was time to show the world what he could really do, and embarked on his first serious original novel. The result is Rivers of London, the debut adventure of Peter Grant.
Near-fine first edition with some light bruising to spine and small bump to top front corner. Some white marking to edges of boards and some foxing to page block. In a near-fine unclipped jacket with some wear to edges.
All of our books that a have dust wrapper are covered in clear protective, removable film and are packed professionally in bubble wrap and a box for shipping so that they reach you in perfect condition.
Join us for a murderously-fun evening, as Victoria Selman chats to fellow author, S. J. Watson, about her highly-anticipated new novel, Truly, Darkly, Deeply - a mind-bl...