Moon over Soho

Rivers of London, Book 2

By: Ben Aaronovitch

Narrated by: Kobna Holdbrook-Smith

I was my dad's vinyl-wallah: I changed his records while he lounged around drinking tea, and that's how I know my Argo from my Tempo. And it's why, when Dr Walid called me to the morgue to listen to a corpse, I recognised the tune it was playing. Something violently supernatural had happened to the victim, strong enough to leave its imprint like a wax cylinder recording. Cyrus Wilkinson, part-time jazz saxophonist and full-time accountant, had apparently dropped dead of a heart attack just after finishing a gig in a Soho jazz club. He wasn't the first.

No one was going to let me exhume corpses to see if they were playing my tune, so it was back to old-fashioned legwork, starting in Soho, the heart of the scene. I didn't trust the lovely Simone, Cyrus' ex-lover, professional jazz kitten and as inviting as a Rubens portrait, but I needed her help: 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.

And as I hunted them, my investigation got tangled up in another story: a brilliant trumpet player, Richard 'Lord' Grant - my father - who managed to destroy his own career, twice. That's the thing about policing: most of the time you're doing it to maintain public order. Occasionally you're doing it for justice. And maybe once in a career, you're doing it for revenge.

Read by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith.

©2011 Ben Aaronovitch (P)2011 Orion Audio

Best series I’ve listened to in years

Urban Fantasy at its best. Atmospheric without unnecessary backstory with a great band of charters and a superb narrator.

Great story, amazing narration

Kobna Holdbrook-Smith is an amazing narrator and I'd listen to him read a takeaway menu on repeat.
But really, it's a great series. I'm not usually into this genre but I got recommended this so often I gave it a shot and I'm so glad I did!
Imperfect characters with great depth and just the right touch of grit and realism without becoming gore-fetish. The worldbuilding is great and the storyline stays enagaging and fresh even after 9 books which is pretty impressive.
It's one of those books that can just really sink into completely and get comfortably lost. 100% recommend.

Perfect

Perfect combination of writer and narrator.
Great story, well told.
Definitely recommend to all my friends

Stellar performance of an enthralling book

Both this and the previous effort by Ben Aaronovitch were excellent fun books to read but were made even better by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith's narrations.
He does multiple characterisations effortlessly without sounding corny and this adds to a sense of involvement in the story which with Aaronovitch's descriptions, make you feel you are watching rather than listening.

Love this series.

The narrator is superb and the characters vivid and likable. Great series!, F@%k me you can do magic indeed!