This Week: Ben Aaronovitch Event at Waterstones Canterbury!


This Friday, October 29th, Waterstones Canterbury will be hosting Ben Aaronovitch for an event celebrating the 10th Anniversary of RIVERS OF LONDON! The event will see Ben chatting with Mark Stay, and begins at 6:30pm. More details can be found, and tickets bought here.

Ben’s fantasy police procedurals set in a reimagined London have a Pratchett level of subversive wit. They have sold millions. Come and get any of his books signed. He will be interviewed by Mark Stay, whose Crow Folk is a tale of witches, demons, and bellringers in wartime Kent. Think Dads Army, with paranormal activity.

RIVERS OF LONDON is the first novel in Ben’s internationally best-selling, critically-acclaimed Peter Grant/Rivers of London series, published in the UK by Gollancz, in North America by Del Rey (as MIDNIGHT RIOT), and widely in translation. Here’s the synopsis…

My name is Peter Grant and until January I was just probationary constable in that mighty army for justice known to all right-thinking people as the Metropolitan Police Service (and as the Filth to everybody else). My only concerns in life were how to avoid a transfer to the Case Progression Unit – we do paperwork so real coppers don’t have to – and finding a way to climb into the panties of the outrageously perky WPC Leslie May. Then one night, in pursuance of a murder inquiry, I tried to take a witness statement from someone who was dead but disturbingly voluble, and that brought me to the attention of Inspector Nightingale, the last wizard in England.

Now I’m a Detective Constable and a trainee wizard, the first apprentice in fifty years, and my world has become somewhat more complicated: nests of vampires in Purley, negotiating a truce between the warring god and goddess of the Thames, and digging up graves in Covent Garden … and there’s something festering at the heart of the city I love, a malicious vengeful spirit that takes ordinary Londoners and twists them into grotesque mannequins to act out its drama of violence and despair.

The spirit of riot and rebellion has awakened in the city, and it’s falling to me to bring order out of chaos – or die trying.