Title: Street Magic
Author: Caitlin Kittredge
Series: Black London
Number: One of six
What It’s About:
Years ago, sixteen-year-old Pete Caldecott fell in love with Jack Winter, mage and lead singer of the Poor Dead Bastards. When a summoning goes wrong, Jack ends up dead and Pete thinks she’s lost him forever.
Fast forward twelve years. Pete, now a Deputy Inspector for the London police, is investigating the disappearance of a young girl when a call comes in with information on where to find her. When Pete meets with the source, she’s surprised to find that Jack Winter’s still alive. Alive, strung out on heroin, and possessing a good deal more magic than he had all those years ago.
Jack tells her the kidnappers are hiding in the shadow-world of the fey and as Pete follows him into the supernatural underworld, she finds herself looking for the truth about Jack Winter as much as she is the missing girl.
Why I Like It and Why You Should Read It:
I stumbled upon Kittredge’s Black London series a few years before discovering Ben Aaronovitch’s Peter Grant or Mike Carey’s Felix Castor, two of my other favorite British mages, and fell in love with its two main characters.
Pete Caldecott is everything you want in an urban fantasy heroine – smart, tough, caring and pretty damn good at her job as a Deputy Inspector in the London police department. Jack Winter, on the other hand, is an absolute mess – a liar, a heroin addict, one of those people who can never seem to get their act together. Never mind the fact that he’s a mage with more than one demon after him.
The two of them together are like a train wreck you can’t turn away from and it makes for fabulous reading as they work to uncover the truth behind the missing children in the dark streets of London and beyond.
Kittredge’s descriptions are excellent, her action tight and evocative, and the storyline comes across as fresh and interesting. Well worth your time to hunt a copy of this down.
Where You Can Get It:
Print editions are, well, out-of-print, which is highly unfortunate. There are a number of used copies floating around in the usual places and it shouldn’t be all that hard to track one down. Or, you can get a fresh, new ebook edition by CLICKING HERE.