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Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch

Trade Paperback – Jabberwocky Literary Agency – Jan 2024 – 325 pages

My name is Peter Grant, and I’ m a Police Constable in that mighty army for justice known as the Metropolitan Police (a.k.a. the Filth). I’ m also an apprentice wizard, the first in fifty years.

When your dad is an almost famous jazz trumpeter, you know the classics. And that’ s why, when Dr Walid called me down to the morgue to listen to a corpse, I recognized the tune it was playing as the jazz classic ‘ Body and Soul.’ Something violently supernatural had happened to the victim, strong enough to leave its imprint on his corpse as if it were a wax cylinder recording. The former owner of the body, Cyrus Wilkinson, was a part-time jazz saxophonist and full-time accountant who had dropped dead of a heart attack just after finishing a gig.

He wasn’ t the first, but no one was going to let me exhume corpses just to see if they were playing my tune. So it was back to old-fashioned police legwork, starting in Soho, the heart of the scene, with the lovely Simone – Cyrus’ s ex-lover, professional jazz kitten and as inviting as a Rubens portrait – as my guide. And it didn’ t take me long to realise there were monsters stalking Soho, creatures feeding off that special gift that separates the great musician from someone who can raise a decent tune. What they take is beauty. What they leave behind is sickness, failure and broken lives.