Review: Rivers of London Volume 1: Body work
Rivers of London is a new series written by Ben Aarronovitch and Andrew Cartmel – based on the Rivers of London series of novels and this story might be placed between novel 4 and 5, but can easily be read standalone – about Peter Grant, a detective working in the special branch of London’s Metropolitan Police as he investigates a murder with supernatural ties. In fact when Grant comes to the scene it has definitely to do with the supernatural.
Peter’s latest case features a self-driving killer car, a refugee, a drug dealer with a nice paisley scarf and other seemingly harmless yet more-then-meets-the-eye persons, situations and objects.
It opens up at the scene of a recent death where the driver of a car seemingly drove into the water and drowned. The resident Detectives think it is a a standard case .. but when Peter Grant shows up it materializes towards a new perspective. Grant goes even as far as asking the daughter of the Goddess of the River Thames about it, who indeed concurs that something was very off about the underwater scene.
From this one moment of supernatural death the story spirals into many more layers of stories and character building exercises without it spiraling into a spectacle. Nothing is overdone, all characters are interesting and the sense of magic is not overdone, but subtle. Subtle since it is supposed to be hidden for the public. So do not expect and dazzling SFX but just expect to be drawn into the dialogues, the great artwork and the overall atmosphere at any given moment.
Rivers of London Volume 1: Body work
Writer: Ben Aaronovitch, Andrew Cartmel
Artist: Lee Sullivan
Titan, paperback, 128 pages, published March 2016
About the Author
Richard Boom Richard is the driving force behind Comics for Sinners. His love and admiration for female comic book characters is virtually unparalleled, which immediately explains his biggest 'sin': his Hot Mummy fetish. This sketchbook theme is philogynistic in nature and even the source of his WIP comic book series "The Sisterhood".
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