Our penultimate suggestion before Hallowe’en 2013: a recent novel of London and magic:
MIDNIGHT RIOT by Ben Aaronovitch (Ballantine Books, 2011)
It started at one thirty on a cold Tuesday morning in January when Martin Turner, street performer and, in his own words, apprentice gigolo, tripped over a body in front of the West Portico of St. Paul’s at Covent Garden. Martin, who was none too sober himself, at first thought the body was that of one of the many celebrants who had chosen the Piazza as a convenient outdoor toilet and dormitory. Being a seasoned Londoner, Martin gave the body the “London once-over” – a quick glance to determine whether this was a drunk, a crazy or a human being in distress. The fact that it was entirely possible for someone to be all three simultaneously is why good-Samaritanism in London is considered an extreme sport – like BASE jumping or crocodile wrestling. Martin, noting the good quality coat and shoes, had just pegged the body as a drunk when he noticed that it was in fact missing its head.
—first paragraph
Maybe, after all my palaver about things dark and dangerous, weird and ghostly, maybe, just maybe, some lighter fare would be appreciated? Something flavored with a horror trope or two but in dashes and pinches, not cups or barrelsful, something that doesn’t apply them too seriously, doesn’t agonize over them, doesn’t obsess over them?
Can do, though I think I’m a bit late to this party.
Here then, Ben Aaronovitch’s Midnight Riot (a.k.a.: Rivers of London in the U.K.), an urban fantasy featuring Peter Grant, a young cop drafted as a sorcerer’s apprentice after interviewing a witness of the above murder, a witness he doesn’t realize until later has been dead going on two-hundred years. Over the course of the story, Grant gets involved with water elementals – the U.K. title is more exact and evocative of the core of the novel – vampires of a sort, and a famous figure from the stage, though discussing who would be telling too much.
One of the blurbs on the U.S. cover makes the inevitable Harry Potter comparison, but it’s not entirely unfair or off-topic, except this is a series aimed at older readers: While Grant isn’t a child, like Harry he’s finding reality rather different from his expectations, and like Harry he is a stranger-in-a-strange-land applying his intelligence and intuition to navigate diplomacies outside his experience. He’s aided in this by his mentor, Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale and his friend, Police Constable Leslie May, both distinct and well-realized characters, as are several others in the supporting cast, notably Detective Chief Inspector Alexander Seawoll, who is not comfortable with magic or Nightingale, and Mama Thames, chief goddess of the rivers of London, and her daughter, Beverly Brook, goddess of a lesser river, who takes a liking to Grant.
As a kid I cut my fiction-reading teeth on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and Rex Stout, among others, so the way in which Grant quickly accepts and adapts to the oddness, and the light-heartedness of much of the telling of this fantasy murder-mystery were like comfort-reading. From my reading experience, the plot and premise of Midnight Riot draws inspiration from and expands on the type of stories published in John W. Campbell, Jr.’s Unknown Worlds, and I suppose the character of Peter Grant descends from William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki and Algernon Blackwood’s John Silence, but maybe more so from mystery characters like Lord Peter Wimsey (Dorothy L. Sayers) and Albert Campion (Margery Allingham), maybe with a dash of Phillip Marlowe (Raymond Chandler) or Archie Goodwin (Rex Stout; if you like books written in first-person wise-ass, this novel is for you). All of which is to say, there’s not much new here, but Aaronovitch is an entertainer who keeps the story bubbling, who provides characters interesting and likable enough to root for, and whose comments on the world he’s creating and the behavior of people in general are often insightful and funny. Further, his choice of villain is audacious and maybe more disturbing for seeming a bit ridiculous.
Series tapping into the tropes and features of horror have a few directions they can go: Accentuate hunting for the monsters or being hunted by the monsters (H. P. Lovecraft at the more contemplative end of the spectrum, and David Wellington’s vampires at the action/adventure end); accentuate the odd things a seeker of the weird comes across (Algernon Blackwood; William Hope Hodgson; Lovecraft’s Randolph Carter stories, too); make the setting the center of the series (Stephen King’s Maine; Lovecraft’s New England); or focus on the character of the protagonist as Aaronovitch does. That last also has some latitude – Manly Wade Wellman’s Silver John stories teeter between horror and fantasy, and Sarah Monette’s stories of Kyle Murcheson Booth balance character and the macabre in The Bone Key – and so may use horror elements as spicing rather than focus. While a few scenes in Midnight Riot create the threat and tension of a horror story (one scene dealing with vampires, and a couple of sequences near the end), other scenes are concerned with exploring the world in which such things be, for example, Grant’s dealings with the water spirits, among the most involving and evocative scenes in the book, are not horrific but essentially political, thus moving away from the usual concerns of horror fiction toward the concerns of a certain type of fantasy. I enjoyed that aspect of the novel and expect to read more by Aaronovitch, and any reader who appreciates the materials of horror but not the grimness should enjoy this one.
Further reading, old stuff: Conjure Wife & The Sinful Ones by Fritz Leiber Nightmares and Geezenstacks by Fredric Brown (included in The Compleat Werewolf by Anthony Boucher
Further reading, not so old stuff, stand-alones: Tamsin by Peter Beagle (this stretches the “urban” part of urban fantasy a bit) The Mall of Cthulhu by Seamus Cooper The Uncertain Places by Lisa Goldstein Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow
Next for Halloween: More dark and dangerous. Even kinda funny.
Maybe, after all my palaver about things dark and dangerous, weird and ghostly, maybe, just maybe, some lighter fare would be appreciated? Something flavored with a horror trope or two but in dashes and pinches, not cups or barrelsful, something that doesn’t apply them too seriously, doesn’t agonize over them, doesn’t obsess over them?
