I've never really read mystery books, I find the genre more entertaining on TV than on paper, but I really enjoyed this book. I didn't expect how a lot of the plots were wrapped up, and there were a bunch of layers of relationships between the characters and the places in London.

The best part is simply Peter Grant. He has a roll your eyes attitude at things and a flat sort of humor. Okay, this is a British book so maybe it's just British humor, but the sort of non-nonchalance he gives to killing vampires and the bureaucratic of the London police makes him solid. He knows parts of what he's doing is crazy and makes no sense , like sniffing dead bodies for traces of magic, and quite regularly makes sarcastic comments about his job like how the London police greeting is 'Oi! What do you think you're doing?'. Grant's also a secret geek, calling Nightingale Harry Potter and joking about magic coming form midi-clorians.

Despite how fantastical the case is, the way it's solved is pure non-fiction. There are disputes between police departments, lots of searching through paperwork, and wrong guesses. This is not one of those quick cases, it takes Grant and Co roughly six months to figure out who is causing people's faces to fall off and stop them.

I'll be honest, this isn't a quick read. It's a decent sized book and while the story moves it didn't grab me to the point where I'd sit and read for hours. But it was constantly in my head and thoughts of Grant's case were never far from my mind. It's a great read to use when you have a lot of actual work to do, because it serves as little vacation from grading papers and lesson planning without sucking you in too deep to not break off and get back to you job to finish by the end of the day.