Rivers of London

Probationary constable Peter Grant is heading for a desk job in the Metropolitan Police's Case Progression Unit—until he takes a witness statement from a ghost at a murder scene in Covent Garden. That encounter pulls him into the Folly, a small, secretive branch of the police that deals with magic, and under the wing of Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale, the last officially sanctioned wizard in England. As Peter learns the fundamentals of magic, he's drawn into two overlapping cases: a wave of shockingly violent, seemingly motiveless attacks across London, and a long-simmering territorial dispute between Mama Thames and Father Thames, the river gods who claim the city's waterways as their own. Blending police procedural with urban fantasy, Rivers of London is the first novel in Ben Aaronovitch's Peter Grant series.