Gollancz
The Hanging Tree was the Tyburn gallows which stood where Marble Arch stands today. Oxford Street was the last trip of the condemned. Some things don't change. The place has a bloody and haunted legacy and now blood has returned to the empty Mayfair mansions of the world's super-rich. And blood mixed with magic is a job for Peter Grant.
Peter Grant is back as are Nightingale et al. at the Folly and the various river gods, ghosts and spirits who attach themselves to England's last wizard and the Met's reluctant investigator of all things supernatural.
We are well into the story of Peter Grant, magic copper, and his various colleagues, both mundane and magical, and his friends and family, both ditto and ditto, and I find myself enjoying them more and more with each book.
After the previous book's sojourn into the countryside - and other place - we're back in London and hot on the trail of Lesley and the Faceless Man as Peter is called in by Beverley's elder sister, Tyburn, to get her daughter out of a pickle following a death at a party. Investigations soon expose another aspect of the magical world and lead Peter and Nightingale in a most interesting direction.
As is ever the case with these 'Rivers of London' books Aaronovitch ladles the police procedures on - just cause Peter can conjure a water balloon doesn't excuse him from report writing and the chain of command or Latin homework for that matter.
Within all this the story is tight and fluid. There is little time for the chilling out at the Folly we often see which is a shame as I really like those bits. What takes their place though is a fast, fun and often funny read that had me firmly in it's grasp from the get go and long may this series continue.
Buy it here - The Hanging Tree: The Sixth PC Grant Mystery
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