Ben Aaronovitch‘s second Peter Grant novel, MOON OVER SOHO, is now available in Korean! Published by Hyundae Munhak as 소호의 달, here’s the Korean synopsis…
내 이름은 피터 그랜트. 런던 수도경찰국 엑스파일 부서 폴리 소속. 영국 최후의 공인 마법사인 나이팅게일 경감의 하나뿐인 부하 겸 도제다. 고로 런던 광역시 내의 모든 초자연적 사건이 내 차지고, 최고의 유흥가 소호도 예외는 아니다. 소호 클럽에서 재즈 음악가들이 공연 직후 별 이유 없이 사망하는 일이 잇따라 일어난다. 현장에 남은 마법적 단서는 재즈곡 <바디 앤드 소울>의 선율. 재즈 트럼펫 연주자인 아버지의 도움을 받아가며 이전의 의문사들까지 추적하느라 눈코 뜰 새가 없다. 살인수사반에서는 음경을 물어뜯겨 사망한 남자들 사건에도 수사 협조를 요구해온다. 조사가 진행될수록 뱀파이어, 질에 이빨이 달린 여인, 키메라에 흑마법사의 존재까지 드러나는데… 나, 사건 해결은커녕 이 틈바구니에서 살아남을 수는 있을지…
And 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.
MOON OVER SOHO is published in the UK by Gollancz, in the US by Del Rey, and has been widely published in translation in other territories. (Check Ben’s author page for details.) Hyundae Munhak have also published RIVERS OF LONDON in Korean, as 런던의 강들.
