Amongst Our Weapons

Amongst Our Weapons is the latest full-length novel in Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series featuring DC Peter Grant of the Met’s smallest and most unusual policing team, the Special Assessment Unit, aka the team that deals with what ordinary coppers often refer to as weird bollocks. Their HQ, known as the Folly, housed in an imposing building overlooking to Russell Square Gardens, is the operational hub for Falcon cases, the official codename for weird bollocks.

The Folly is expanding, and when Peter is called to a suspicious death in the London Silver Vaults, he’s accompanied by DC Danni Wickford, who’s shadowing him on a Basic Falcon Management Course. Danni is promptly warned by long-suffering DI Miriam Stephanopoulos and the equally long-suffering DS Sahra Guleed, both of whom have ample experience of working with Peter, not to pick up any bad habits. That’s not necessarily advice that Danni is going to find easy to follow, as Peter doesn’t always act with the level of circumspection preferred by his boss, DCI Thomas Nightingale and his pregnant partner, river goddess Beverley Brook. But the life of a magical practitioner and London copper isn’t always played by the book.

On this outing, Peter is investigating the curious case of a man with a very neat hole in his chest (not caused by a bullet), hampered by witnesses with convenient memory loss, a distinct lack of security camera footage and something that sounds suspiciously like an angel with fiery wings. Oh, and if that’s not enough to be going on with, there are magic rings in the mix, too, and a visit to the wilds of the north in company with DCI Alexander Seawoll, who has to go back to his roots, with Peter and Danni in tow. There are some very atmospheric scenes on the eerie Lancashire moors with wartime ghosts and crashed planes as Peter, Danni and Seawoll delve deep into the history of the Folly’s relationship with other magical practitioners.

Peter’s magical ability has grown during his apprenticeship with the formidable Nightingale, but on this occasion, it looks dangerously like even they might have met their combined match as they go up against their most dangerous opponent yet. And naturally Peter’s former colleague and sometime nemesis Lesley May has her finger firmly inserted in this magical pie. The darker aspects of the story are expertly balanced by the scenes involving Beverley, the posse of talking foxes that hang around in the hope of extracting cheese puffs in return for useful intel, as they like to term it, and Beverley’s extended family, all of whom are determined to rally round her in the final stages of her pregnancy, including the usually aloof Lady Ty, who’s at her most terrifying - at least where Peter is concerned - in a domestic setting.

As ever, it’s all great fun, but with a sense of real danger bringing a sharp edge to a series that gains depth with each new story. I particularly like the way the extended canon of the books, novellas and graphic novels all come together to form one seamless whole, combining police work and magic into the UK’s best urban fantasy series.