MOON OVER SOHO, the second novel in Ben Aaronovitch‘s critically-acclaimed, best-selling Peter Grant series, is coming soon in Romania! Due to be published by Editura Herg Benet as SOHO ÎN LUMINA LUNII in November, the cover’s above and here’s the synopsis…

Cântecul. Asta remarcă întâi de toate polițistul și ucenicul vrăjitor Peter Grant atunci când examinează trupul lui Cyrus Wilkins, cântăreț de jazz în timpul liber și contabil pentru restul vieții, care aparent a murit de acat de cord în timp ce cânta pe scena Club 666 din cartierul Soho al Londrei. Ritmul vechilor melodii de jazz se ridică din corpul său ‒ un semn clar că ceva la moartea bărbatului nu este natural, ci supranatural.

Trup și suflet. Asta este și ceea ce riscă Peter Grant pentru a investiga o serie de decese similare din zona Soho. Cu ajutorul ofițerului său superior, Inspector Șef Thomas Nightingale, ultimul vrăjitor din Anglia, și cu asistența frumoasei fane a lumii jazz-ului Simone Fitzwilliam, Peter descoperă o primejdie magică letală ‒ una care conduce la treptele propriei case și la o promisiune uitată a unui tânăr muzician: talentatul cântăreț de trompetă Richard „Lord“ Grant ‒ altfel cunoscut ca dragul tată al lui Peter.

Herg Benet have also published the first book in the series, RIVERS OF LONDON, as RÂURILE DIN LONDRA.

MOON OVER SOHO is published in the UK by Gollancz, and in the US by Del Rey, and widely in translation. Here’s the English-language synopsis…

Peter Grant is not just a lowly Detective Constable, he’s also apprenticed to the last wizard in Britain: policing will never be the same again!

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.

Here, also, are some of the various translation covers…

And here are just a handful of the reviews the novel has received since it was first published…

‘The excitement and entertainment hasn’t stopped in the slightest…  this book once again blew my mind, and kept me reading well into the late night/early morning. You needn’t pick up RIVERS OF LONDON, Aaronovitch’s first in this series, but you’d regret it by the time you got to the end of MOON OVER SOHO and found out how good it was.’ — Fantasy Book Review

‘… as funny as it is fantastic… [The plot] hops along happily to a toe-tapping time signature, with a sweet solo here and an awesome cacophony of noise there… vast amounts of fun…’ — Speculative Scotsman

‘MOON OVER SOHO is very good. Ben Aaronovitch continues the successful formula of RIVERS OF LONDON in bringing to the surface the endearing minutae of a city that he clearly adores. He also demonstrates the “real world” problems of a ritual magician trying to have some sort of ‘normal’ life… Grant continues to observe his world(s) in a detached way – a narrative voice that lends itself well to dry humor (and fits less neatly with the book’s few over-the-top action scenes). Mr. Aaronovitch is, in short, writing the best contemporary occult detective series on the shelf today, and that’s by a substantial margin.’ — Pornokitsch

‘A fantastic follow-up to MIDNIGHT RIOT. Aaronovitch does a great job of bringing even minor characters to life. One of Grant’s fellow cops, Leslie, plays a minor role throughout the story – but her involvement is an emotional cornerstone that brings a surprisingly bittersweet element into play… MOON OVER SOHO is an excellent addition to the paranormal police genre.’ — Examiner