Broken Homes is the fourth in Ben Aaronovitch's series about streetwise, magically gifted copper Peter Grant, fighting "weird stuff" on the streets of London. On this occasion, the skulduggery leads our hero, together with partner Lesley and boss Nightingale, to an only-slightly-fictitious brutalist housing estate at the Elephant and Castle, but one which turns out to be imbued with special properties unsuspected by its residents.
As ever, the plot rattles along, in the always agreeable company of PC Grant, whose knowing take on police procedure and contemporary London street life are a genuine delight. The usual cast of improbable multicultural river deities, faeries, water sprites and wood nymphs is also out in force, and by now we are expected to know who they are and where they all come from.
It's an enjoyable book, though perhaps strains to maintain the multiplotted inventiveness of earlier stories in the series, in spite of quite an intriguing notion of the modernist school of architecture being laced through with esoteric 1930's German theorising about the industrialisation of magic.
What to say? It's fun, I will keep reading them, but not everyone's cup of tea perhaps. As I have said before, if this does take your fancy, start at the beginning with Rivers of London, still the best.
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