“The Wimbledon Poisoner” by Nigel Williams (1990)

“Henry Farr did not, precisely, decide to murder his wife.”

Wimbledon, to most people around the world, is simply the place where the tennis happens. If you’re of a certain age, you may also associate it with the Wombles, the rodent rubbish collectors of the common. This fairly affluent area of south London became central to three of Nigel Williams’ books, known as The Wimbledon Trilogy. This suburban murder mystery is the first.

Forty-year-old solicitor Henry Farr is having something of a mid-life crisis. He has realised that his life has devolved to containing nothing but an unhappy marriage, a demanding daughter, an unfulfilling job, and weekend visits to Waitrose. The only thing that makes him happy is writing his magnum opus, The Complete History of Wimbledon, and even that has lost some of its lustre after it was rejected by a publisher. He manages to put most of the fault on his wife, Elinor, and decides that he needs to kill her. He debates strangling, electrocution and pushing her off a cliff before realising that his method should be poison, and before he knows what’s happened, he’s bought some thallium from the chemist and is smearing it onto that evening’s chicken.

However, Elinor is in one of her “moods”, and rejects dinner after all, much to the annoyance of Henry. Unfortunately, friend and local doctor Donald has popped in for dinner and eats the chicken instead, which proves to be his last act. Furious that his murder attempt has failed – and saddened by the death of his friend – Henry decides to make a second attempt. Soon, his friends and neighbours begin falling like dominoes and things begin to get out of control as he continues to fail in killing his wife. He needs to stop, not least because DI Rush from over the road has begun hanging around more often than usual, and Henry is sure that his taciturn nature is just a front for what he really suspects is happening in their quiet neighbourhood…

Suburbia is broadly assumed to be a very boring place indeed. It is a place between the city and the country where people have gone to raise families and absolutely nothing exciting happens at all. Therefore, in fiction, the suburbs are incredibly thrilling places, with all sorts of things going on in them, from wizards and vampires hiding among the normal people, to every other resident being a murderer. Williams really plays up the smallness of the situation, with Henry knowing everyone in the street and discussing them only in terms of their nickname and house number. We all have people in the street that we don’t really know the names of, but refer to as things like Jungian Analyst with the Winebox or Unpublished Magical Realist. Some of the names are brilliantly obscure and make little sense, their reasoning lost to time which feels very real. I think all of the action takes place in Wimbledon and it becomes the key focus of the novel in many ways.

Henry isn’t especially unlikable, but then again, not many of the characters are. You don’t wish any of them dead, sure, so you still have some empathy as the list of the dead grows, but you’d also be hard-pushed to find a solid reason to bring them back again. Of their time, while some of the characters have embraced feminism and environmentalism, most of the others are still small-minded, racist, sexist and unwilling to engage with modern society. I’ve recently binge-watched the entire series of Ever Decreasing Circles, and you get the same feeling of a “little England”, where everyone should be obliged to be white, straight, in steady employment and part of the local cricket team. Of course, at least there none of them were trying to kill each other (as far as we know).

The ongoing madness and the escalation of murders is done very well, and in some ways the book is a classic farce. Yet, as it becomes more objectively ridiculous, it stays engaging and still feels real. It’s effortlessly funny and it doesn’t need to reach far for the jokes, simply relying on observation and the interaction between the characters. We definitely need more comedy novels these days and while the likes of Jasper Fforde and Stevyn Colgan are doing their best, the wider publishing world seems to have little interest. The British are obsessed with murder and we pride ourselves on our humour – why are books like this not held in higher esteem or considered “worthy”? A mystery for the ages.

In the meantime, I recommend this delightfully dark and silly comedy of manners.

My second novel, The Third Wheel, is now available on Amazon and Waterstones! It tells the story of Dexter, a twenty-something teacher who is struggling with the fact that he alone among his friends is single and isn’t ready to grow up. But when aliens invade, it puts a lot of his problems into perspective. Mixing comedy, science fiction and horror, the novel promises to have something for everyone. I hope you’ll check it out!

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Six of the Best … London bookshops

London has an enormous literary history. From the days when Chaucer was pounding the streets, all the greats seem to have found their way here. Shakespeare had his theatre on the south bank. Dickens lived there and turned the city into a character of its own. Agatha Christie called it her home for much of her life, and along with many of the other detective writers of the era, founded a club for them to meet and socialise. To this day, it is an absolute haven for book lovers. I do apologise for the London-centric focus of this post, but I just felt I had to discuss the best bookshops in this great city.

The British Library is the beating heart of London’s literary body. By law, the library receives a copy of every book published in Britain and Ireland, meaning mine are in there too, which is probably my proudest achievement. It also contains a very charming bookshop, but really this is just a bonus. All bibliophiles should stop in here, because their collection is remarkable. Where else can you see the Magna Carta, some of Leonardo da Vinci’s notes and Jane Austen’s writing desk?

Daunt Books gets an honourable mention, just for being so damn beautiful. There are a number of branches across London, but the first and most impressive is the Marylebone branch. Notable for its long oak galleries, large skylights and William Morris prints, it takes the breath away. It specialises in travel books, but caters to many other needs, too, and has in the last decade also begun publishing its own books. If it’s travel-based books you’re really after, however, I suggest Stanfords in Covent Garden, which will cater to your every whim.

I also can’t not mention Foyles, which to many people is the London bookshop, and the first place to stock my novel on its shelves. The company was founded in 1903, and gained a reputation for “anachronistic, eccentric and sometimes infuriating” methods of bookselling, but these have simply served to make it famous. The flagship store in on Charing Cross Road, but there are several smaller ones around the city. The most famous owner was Christina Foyle who had control of the company from 1945-99, implementing many of the wacky business practices that made it so notable, including the fact that customers had to queue three times to purchase anything because sales staff were not allowed to handle cash, not allowing orders to be taken over the phone, and the truly bizarre decision to shelve books by publisher rather than author or even title. Famously, in the 1980s, rival bookshop Dillons ran an advertising campaign with the slogan, “Foyled again? Try Dillons.”

Where is the heaviest concentration of bookshops in London, however? There are so many streets in the city dedicated to specific things – Denmark Street for music, Saville Row for high-end fashion, Hatton Garden for jewellery – there just has to be one for books. And there is. It’s called Cecil Court (informally dubbed “Booksellers’ Row”) and can be found near Leicester Square, linking St Martin’s Lane and Charing Cross. A small street with Victorian fronted shops, it has existed since the seventeenth century, and now houses around twenty second-hand and antiquarian bookshops, . It holds another singularly cool claim to fame: Mozart lived there for four years.

The city has also seen the loss of some of its finest bookshops over the years. Murder One (1988-2009) was a shop specialising in “hard-to-find and collectable crime, mystery, romance and science fiction literature.” It was the first UK bookshop to specialise in crime and mystery, and was at its opening in 1988, the largest “genre” bookshop in Europe. It closed in 2009 when the owner retired, but still exists online as a mail order service. Elsewhere, we have lost Silver Moon Bookshop (a feminist bookshop that was later folded into Foyle’s), the Poetry Bookshop (1913-1926) which did exactly what it says on the tin and sold hand-coloured rhyme sheets for children, and Henderson’s, founded in 1909 and otherwise known as The Bomb Shop, that was known for selling and publishing radical left and anarchist writing. It’s sad to have lost so many specialists, but we’ve still got plenty to explore.

And so here are six of the best bookshops to visit London:

Skoob

If you like browsing the shelves of a second-hand bookshop, then Skoob is for you. A basement shop near Russell Square, this paradise of the printed word houses over 55,000 uncatalogued books, meaning you never know what you’re going to stumble up against. Primarily it is a place for academic textbooks, but there is all manner of fiction here too, and I’ve spent a good deal of time browsing the shelves, especially those (pictured) dedicated to the famous orange paperbacks from Penguin. There’s also a section of their green paperbacks, all of which are crime novels. The Bloomsbury institution even offers its own gift vouchers, and promises that all books are priced at half (or less) of what they would be new. It’s a genuinely thrilling place to explore, right in the heart of that most literary corner of literary London.

Gay’s the Word

Speaking of Bloomsbury, we come to the most specialist shop on the list. Gay’s the Word is the only specialist LGBT bookshop in the whole of England. Founded in Marchmont Street in 1979 by gay socialist group, the Gay Icebreakers, the bookshop has since become a cultural cornerstone for London’s queer community. In 1984, Customs and Excise took it to be a porn store instead of a bookshop, and seized thousands of pounds worth of stock, including titles like The Joy of Gay Sex and works by Christopher Isherwood, Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal. It was the meeting place for the group Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners in 1984-5, who’s story is told in the amazing film Pride. The bookshop continues to go from strength to strength and is a vital stopping off point for anyone who wants to branch out from reading the same old straight, white men. Sitting on the shelves of this shop are many authors who have been sidelined, but are worth checking out.

Waterloo Bridge Book Market

You would imagine that a bookshop that is permanently outside would be a bad idea in Britain, given this country’s tendency to be somewhat wet, but an ingenious solution has been found that means this bookshop can open every day, whatever the weather: put it under a bridge. Open every day until seven (sometimes earlier in the winter) whatever the weather, despite being on the main thoroughfare of the Southbank, it has somehow remained one of London’s best open secrets. It has a wide range of paperbacks and hardbacks, including some collectables. There is something for everyone here, from children to crime nuts, romantics to fantasy lovers. as well as extras like beautiful book-based art prints. Like all good bookshops, the emphasis is on the shop’s browsability, a term I’ve just devised. It doesn’t matter how inclement the weather, if I’m in the area, I have to have a quick browse of the tables, and have picked up several rare and unusual books here.

Word on the Water

I only stumbled across Word on the Water last year and couldn’t believe I’d never heard of it before. It is one of the most unique bookshops in London as it is found on a barge. Before it acquired permanent mooring, it used to move to a different spot in the canals every two weeks, but it now has dropped anchor just behind Granary Square at King’s Cross for the foreseeable future. Founded in 2011, it is certainly one of London’s quirkiest bookshops and sells both new and used books. The roof of the barge has also become the perfect place for any number of events including interesting talks, live music, readings and poetry slams. It’s very quickly become one of my favourite places in London to spend time.

Hatchards

In Britain, you know somewhere is going to excel in quality when it’s used by the Royal Family. Founded in 1797, and trading from the same location since 1801, it claims to be the UK’s oldest bookshop. It holds three Royal Warrants, a sure sign of its quality. There is something about the shop and its decor that sends you back in time, despite the modern books on the shelves. It is a haven of peace in Piccadilly, and hosts regular signings and events with authors. It is the kind of place where you get the sense the booksellers really have read everything on sale. If you head a few paces down the road, you come to the final entry on our list.

Waterstones Piccadilly

Given the sheer number of bookshops in London, it might seem odd to then pick the market leader for this list instead of a small independent, but I’m afraid I simply can’t go without mentioning it. This is the bookshop in London I have spent the most time in, and is an absolute haven for any bookworm. It is reputedly the largest bookshop in Europe, and it has the statistics to back it up. 200,000 titles are sold across six floors and eight miles of shelving. Along with the books, it also contains two cafes, a bar, and a Russian Bookshop. Housed inside a 1930s art deco building that is Grade I listed, it’s the kind of building, like the Natural History Museum, that would look great whatever you put in it.

There are, of course, numerous other branches of Waterstones in the city, each with their own quirks. The Tottenham Court Road branch is the “hipster” cousin, with exposed walls and pipes, as well as one of the funniest business-based Twitter accounts ever. The Gower Street branch is another one that stretches over five floors, and has reading nooks, skeletons manning one of the tills, and an art gallery. In the Bromley store, you’ll find a lot of events catering for children, and the Islington branch has its own fish tank. Tim Waterstone, the company’s founder, said he wanted to create a company that was big but felt small, with very knowledgeable staff, comfortable surroundings, and masses of choice. I think we all agree that he’s done that. Of course we must support the independent shops, but there is something  magical about Waterstones that has ensured its survival and success.

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Thanks for joining in and reading this new entry in my new series, Six of the Best. This will (hopefully) be a twice-monthly series in which I take a look at fiction and books more generally and explore the fictional worlds I love so much. If you’ve got any suggestions for things you’d like to see me talk about, then please comment and let me know!

“The Fog” by James Herbert (1975)

“The village slowly began to shake off its slumber and come to life.”

Fog is one of the strangest weather formations the planet throws up. Sure, when you get down to basics, it’s pretty much just a low-lying cloud. Nonetheless, fog stirs up the primal fear – that of the unknown. Fog shrouds our view of the world and has led to numerous disasters throughout history, from ships running aground on rocks, to lives being lost in wars when views are suddenly obscured. It’s not alone, as there are also its sisters smog (smoke and fog, creating the infamous peasoupers of London) and vog (volcanic ash and fog). But it’s that primal fear I mentioned that we can’t get away from. Nothing is always scarier than something, and who knows what might be lurking in that dense mist, so close but invisible.

In The Fog, it’s not quite clear what the titular mist is. When a large crack in the ground opens up in a village in Wiltshire, a yellowish vapour rises from the fissure and sets off across the countryside. At first people think nothing much of it, just noting its strange colour, but it soon turns out that anyone who gets caught in the fog … changes. At a school, pupils mutilate one of their teachers. In a church, a priest exposes himself to his parishioners. On a farm, a herd of cows trample their owner. When the fog reaches Bournemouth and manages to convince the entire town to walk down to the sea and drown itself, the police and the government know that whatever they are dealing with is unlike anything they’ve ever seen.

The only hope now, it seems, is John Holman, the only person in the country who has been exposed to the fog and cured of its insanity-inducing properties. Given the unenviable task of getting close enough to the fog to get a sample so that a cure can be manufactured to save everyone else before they kill themselves or one another, Holman sets about doing so with guidance from scientists and politicians. However, he’s also got to deal with his beloved Casey, who has also been infected by the fog, and time may be running out, as the fog now seems to be on its way to London…

The scenario Herbert dreams up here isn’t actually scary in itself, as the chance of a malicious, mind-altering fog coming into existence seems slim. However, what the fog actually is never gets adequately explained, so the sense of unease does hang around. It’s very possible it’s an example of biological warfare that has been accidentally released during a bomb test, but it could so easily be something much more otherworldly and sinister. The true horror here lies in how those who have been affected react. It brings out base animalistic tendencies, some people changing immediately and others taking hours to succumb, and most people immediately want to kill and torture. Many kill themselves, either jumping from windows or throwing themselves into water, but many more set about killing their loved ones and strangers in increasingly gory ways.

The novel frequently leaves Holman and his associates to show us how “normal” people are being affected, and Herbert does this well by fully fleshing out each character with a few pages of backstory before the fog interrupts their lives. This is never invasive, and makes us care about the characters we’re seeing die, even if they’re not all pleasant. One man, for example, is shown as being a drunk and a terrible husband but it’s still a shock when his racing pigeons, returning home through the fog, gang up and kill him. Another man, in one of the book’s lighter moments, feels no compulsion stronger in his insanity than a desire to kick everyone’s backsides.

A chilling and very dark novel that explores how quickly society can fall, what measure any of us are sane, and how we must deal with death.

My second novel, The Third Wheel, is now available on Amazon and Waterstones! It tells the story of Dexter, a twenty-something teacher who is struggling with the fact that he alone among his friends is single and isn’t ready to grow up. But when aliens invade, it puts a lot of his problems into perspective. Mixing comedy, science fiction and horror, the novel promises to have something for everyone. I hope you’ll check it out!

“The Last Romeo” by Justin Myers (2018)

“I felt disoriented, and a bit peaky.”

The vast majority of my friends are coupled up, co-habiting and/or married now, so as one of the few singletons they know, any movements in my (by choice non-existent) love life are keenly dissected. They are amused by things like Tinder, having never had to use it, and freely admit that if they were suddenly single again, they’d have no idea how to meet someone new. The dating scene has changed rapidly in the last few years. Internet dating became the norm, and then apps took over again. We swipe and decide it doesn’t matter if we reject that face, because here come fifty more. You’d think we’d all be bored of it all by now, but no, people want to keep talking about love and dating like it’s shameful to want to be single.

Celebrity journalist James is thirty-four and his six-year relationship with the gym worshipping Adam has just ended. He moves into a new flat and nurses his pride, not helped by the fact he hates his job and his best friend has just announced she’s off to Russia for a new job. Before she leaves, however, she encourages him to get back on the dating scene, which he does, recording the details of all the dates in an anonymous blog, One More Romeo.

As James meets a plethora of attractive, strange or just inappropriate men, the blog begins to gain traction and he’s soon got a small but devoted following and a chance to write a column for a big magazine. Naturally, it all goes tits up when he tells his followers about his night with a closeted Olympian and the post goes viral. Now finding himself in the middle of a social media shit storm, James begins to wonder if he can ever get back his old life and undo the damage…

This is one of those books where the main character just lacks something. He seems almost too good to be true, constantly described by others as nice and handsome and kind, but a lot of the things that prove it take place off the page, so it’s very much a catalogue of informed traits. What we see of him is quite shallow, vain, desperate and nasty. He doesn’t think about what he’s doing and becomes entirely selfish. He gets worse from there on in, arguing with his Olympian beau about why he should come out and not listening to the other side, and neglecting his godsons and friends to the point of injury and forgetting birthdays. Although the main premise is about him being two characters, it seems a bit too literal at times. His personality jars and the two halves don’t quite fit together. It’s perhaps an idealised version of what the author wishes his life was like. The secondary characters have a bit of fun to themselves, but no real agency, most of them existing solely for James to bounce his dialogue off.

Generally though, I wasn’t entirely put off by it. The jokes are thick and fast and Myers has an astounding way with metaphor and analogy that I’m actually a bit jealous of. His descriptions of people are witty and they usually feel solid enough, even if their personality lacks. There are also a couple of moments where he so accurately nails what it’s like to be single in today’s society – such as feeling like you’re always intruding on other people’s times – that my heart hurt. It also has some interesting stuff to say about coming out, and in general with how we identify. It is, really, a book about who we are and the face we choose to show the world. Anonymity may have some benefits, but there are drawbacks too. The same is shown to be true of fame. The Internet has allowed us to throw even more masks on, hiding behind cartoon avatars, Instagram filters and witty bios.

Although I’m sure some people would argue it does nothing to work against stereotypes that pervade regarding gay men, in general it’s not a bad book. I think its heart is in the right place, even if James’s isn’t, and there are some decent lessons to be learnt here if you choose to acknowledge them.

“Whose Body?” by Dorothy L. Sayers (1923)

“‘Oh damn!’ said Lord Peter Wimsey at Piccadilly Circus.”

There were three personalities that really created and gave life to the Detective Club, which is ironic given they they dedicated the rest of their lives to ending lives. Anthony Berkeley, I’ve read a little of. Agatha Christie, I’ve read the lot. That leaves the third – Dorothy L. Sayers. Just as mysterious, macabre and magnificent as the others, Sayers was responsible for gifting the world Lord Peter Wimsey, so I felt it was about time I introduced myself.

Lord Peter Wimsey, aristocrat and detective, has been called to investigate the bathroom of Mr Alfred Thipps. It’s a pleasant room, except for the fact that there’s a dead body in the bath. Thipps has never seen the man before, and can’t explain how he ended up in his bath. The body is also, surprisingly, naked, save for a pair of pince-nez.

Elsewhere across town, Jewish financier Sir Reuben Levy has gone missing, last seen walking out of his house apparently without any clothes on. To Inspector Sugg, it seems an open and shut case – the body is clearly that of Levy. However, Wimsey is pretty sure that it isn’t and so begins a mission to find out where Levy went and whose body is in the bath…

As ever with the murder mysteries of the twenties, it’s a surprisingly modern and funny tale. Wimsey is a character I was immediately charmed by and find him silly and whimsical but immensely sharp and good company. It turns out that he saw active duty during World War One and Sayers does not shy away from this, as in one scene, Wimsey wakes up in the night convinced that he is still in the army. His butler calms him and returns him to bed. This is referred to as Wimsey’s “shell shock”, but of course we would know it better now as PTSD. It’s vital to remember that this book was published just five years after the war had ended, and there wasn’t a soul in the country who wasn’t cognisant of the effect it had had on the serving population.

Of course, the book is still somewhat bound to sensibilities of the time. The plot is actually based on a true case, but in that one, the corpse was identified as not being Jewish by the fact that it wasn’t circumcised. Sayers did not include this specific detail, instead having the identity hang on a couple of scars and some badly-bitten nails, but if Wimsey was any sort of detective, he would have spotted this immediately. Funny, certainly, but of its time. There are a couple of choice remarks relating to Jewish people, although none necessarily out-and-out offensive, just coming from clueless characters. The fact alone that Sayers named her character Reuben Levy seems to point out that she didn’t want you to forget at any moment that he was Jewish.

The plotting is clever and the solution immensely satisfying, even if Wimsey is sometimes prone to deductions that even Sherlock Holmes might find a bit fanciful. His butler, Mr Bunter, is also a great foil for his erratic behaviour, but I reserve a particular fondness already for Wimsey’s mother, the Dowager Duchess, who seems just as insightful as her son and quite a force to be reckoned with. It’s a very sharp, tight story and has a really wonderful, easy structure that pulls you in and ensures you want to stay and find out what happens.

I’ll definitely be back here again. Sayers is clearly one of the Grand Dames of the Murder Mystery.

My second novel, The Third Wheel, is now available on Amazon and Waterstones! It tells the story of Dexter, a twenty-something teacher who is struggling with the fact that he alone among his friends is single and isn’t ready to grow up. But when aliens invade, it puts a lot of his problems into perspective. Mixing comedy, science fiction and horror, the novel promises to have something for everyone. I hope you’ll check it out!

“The Art Of Failing” by Anthony McGowan (2017)

“I’m back working again at the British Library.”

It’s been one of those weeks where very little seems to have gone right, with the exception of polishing an opening chapter of a novel I hope to finish some time between May and the heat death of the universe. However, it turns out that I am actually having a pretty good time of it when compared to Anthony McGowan.

An author and creative writing teacher, McGowan records a year in his life in this book with entries for almost every day. Almost without exception, something embarrassing, shocking, humbling, sad or ridiculous happens to him in every entry, but at the same time they are almost all hilarious. He seems a genial sort of chap, plodding through life just trying not to do anything that lands him in trouble, but that’s clearly easier said than done. Whether he’s trying to buy shoelaces, fix a puncture, or trying to change the battery in the smoke alarm, there is something that is going to go wrong. He’ll usually end up drunk, with another puncture, or for some reason being convinced that the only way home is to wade through the Serpentine.

Written with complete charm and a continual sense of humour, even when he’s being glared at by his long-suffering wife for the hundredth time that week, the book genuinely made me laugh out loud repeatedly. A particular favourite was when McGowan accidentally posts his sandwich along with a letter – something up until now I’ve ever known a Mr Man character to do (Mr Forgetful, if you’re curious) – and forlornly wishes that he’s stamped and addressed the sandwich, then at least he could have eaten it tomorrow when it got delivered.

Among the humour, though, are some genuinely insightful and beautiful moments. My absolute favourite is when he sees a green woodpecker while eating his lunch and declares no day wasted if you’ve seen a woodpecker – or a fire engine. I also love his notion that if you were starting from scratch and getting rid of all the bad animals like lice and tapeworms, you’d definitely keep the woodpeckers. Despite all the problems that befall him, McGowan is able to draw up some wonderful insights about the natural world, modern living, and ornithology. He’s also very keen on grebes.

It’s a lovely book that asks all the important questions in life. What am I doing with myself? Is writing a real job? And if Clement Atlee’s socks had been softer, would there have been an NHS?

My second novel, The Third Wheel, is now available on Amazon and Waterstones! It tells the story of Dexter, a twenty-something teacher who is struggling with the fact that he alone among his friends is single and isn’t ready to grow up. But when aliens invade, it puts a lot of his problems into perspective. Mixing comedy, science fiction and horror, the novel promises to have something for everyone. I hope you’ll check it out!

“The Furthest Station” by Ben Aaronovitch (2017)

“Jaget said he’d been watching this documentary on TV about the way people learn to track animals.”

I’ve been away from Peter Grant’s London since 2017, and what better way to ease myself in with the novella that fits into the continuity but doesn’t require much time to get back into. Much of the action here, however, takes us out of London and right to the very edge of the Metropolitan Line of the London Underground, which stretches out much further than many people realise.

A series of abusive attacks have taken place on a Tube train between Harrow-on-the-Hill and Baker Street, but anyone who reports them forgets they happened minutes later and is surprised when the police calls them to follow up. Sergeant Jaget Kumar knows when something seems fishy on the magnitude of a whale shark, so summons in Peter Grant and Inspector Nightingale of the Folly, the branch of the Met Police that deals with “the weird stuff”.

Accompanied by his genius troublemaker of a teenage cousin Abigail, Peter begins searching the Metropolitan Line rolling stock, finding several ghosts haunting the trains and stations, many of whom seem desperate to pass on a message but are having trouble locating someone who will listen to them. When the ghost of a small girl tells Peter a story about a princess trapped by an evil man, he becomes convinced that someone has been kidnapped, and so sets off to Chesham, the furthest station out on the London Underground…

Aaronovitch is a great writer and his style is what I aspire to, with breezy, silly lines and jokes in between the more serious aspects of the story, leading to a fun and funny romp through a world he clearly enjoys writing. The characters of the river goddesses are much diluted here with just a few mentions and a short appearance on-page for one of them, and frankly I’m not saddened. I enjoy the Rivers, but there is so much more of London to explore. The rest of the cast are still great fun – Abigail is rapidly becoming my favourite character – and Aaronovitch manages to produce a completely multicultural London without it feeling laboured, tokenistic or obligatory. London is one of the most diverse cities in the world, and many works seem to neglect this aspect of it. Here, it’s part and parcel.

The magic continues to not overwhelm the story, and while it’s sad that in some respects we don’t get to see Peter learning new spells and abilities, constantly falling back on his knack of producing a ball of light as his primary magical flourish, it’s clear that he is slowly learning more things. I sense that given Abigail’s speed at picking up her other studies, she will be more powerful than him in a book or two from now and perhaps there’s even a plan for a spin-off series of YA books with her at the helm. There’s a lot about her that she and Aaronovitch still aren’t telling us and I look forward to finding out what’s there.

A quick, easy read with a few good laughs and some fun ideas.

My second novel, The Third Wheel, is now available on Amazon and Waterstones! It tells the story of Dexter, a twenty-something teacher who is struggling with the fact that he alone among his friends is single and isn’t ready to grow up. But when aliens invade, it puts a lot of his problems into perspective. Mixing comedy, science fiction and horror, the novel promises to have something for everyone. I hope you’ll check it out!