So Moon Over Soho is the second in a series of books which began with Rivers of London which I reviewed here earlier this year, and is more of the same; but fear not because that is a very, very good thing indeed.

Peter Grant is still in training as a wizard in a very special police unit in London. The repercussions on his friends and colleagues from the first story are still being felt, and because his rather wonderful boss, Thomas Nightingale, is still recovering, Peter is left a little more to his own devices.

The story kicks off when he is called to view a body which seems to be giving off a faint whiff of music, specifically jazz, which is one of Peter’s specialities because his Dad was a well-known jazz musician who hasn’t played for a while because of drugs and other things. So we are off on a trail of musicians meeting violent ends after gigs, “jazz vampires”, horrible experiments and a faceless wizard of some power. Along the way we also finds out a little more of the background to wizards in England and a tiny bit more about what exactly happened at Etterberg during the war.

Silvery Dude and I talked about doing a read-a-long as we had both enjoyed the first novel so much but a combination of my reading slump and him taking the book on holiday with him meant that he read it first (curses) but was good enough not to spoil it, just looking on indulgently when I said how much I had enjoyed it. Which I did, of course.

I’m really looking forward to the third volume to see how the wee surprise at the end develops, and had hoped that it would be out later this year but Amazon seems to be indicating that the next tale won’t be published until next spring so I’m just going to have to wait.

Was never very good at that.

But this comes highly recommended, though better to have read Rivers first.