Next month, Oz Editorial are due to publish new, paperback editions of MOON OVER SOHO and THE HANDING TREE! The second and sixth novels in Ben Aaronovitch‘s Peter Grant/Rivers of London series, they are published in Spanish as LA LUNA SOBRE EL SOHO and EL ARBOL DEL AHORCADO. Here’s the synopsis for the former…
Vuelve Peter Grant, el detective más mágico de Scotland Yard.
Cyrus Wilkins, bajista de jazz por las noches y contable de día, sufre un ataque al corazón durante una actuación en el Club 606 del Soho. Cuando el detective de Scotland Yard y aprendiz de mago Peter Grant examina su cadáver, no puede evitar fijarse en la canción que emerge del cuerpo de la víctima… un claro indicio de que una fuerza sobrenatural acabó con su vida. Con la ayuda de su padre, el famoso trompetista Lord Grant; el inspector Nightingale, el último mago de Inglaterra; y la hermosa y misteriosa aficionada al jazz Simone Fitzwilliam, Peter tratará de acabar con una magia muy poderosa que amenaza la vida en el célebre y pintoresco barrio del Soho.
Oz Editorial has published the first six novels in the series in Spain.
The Rivers of London novels and novellas are published in the UK by Gollancz; the books are published in North America by Del Rey (1-3), DAW Books (4-) and Subterranean Press (novellas).
Here’s the English-language synopsis for MOON OVER SOHO…
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.
The series has also been published widely in translation, and has been an international best-seller.