Rivers of London characters

Appears from the start

A probationary constable with London's Metropolitan Police, son of a Sierra Leonean mother and an English father who was once a promising jazz trumpeter. Curious and easily sidetracked, with an engineer's itch to know how things really work, he is bracing for a dull transfer to a case-paperwork unit when he takes a witness statement from a ghost outside a Covent Garden murder scene. That encounter brings him to the notice of the one man in the Met who handles such things, and he is taken on as the first apprentice wizard England has trained in generations.

Appears from the start

A probationary constable and Peter's closest friend since training, generally reckoned the sharper and more naturally gifted officer of the pair and tipped for a fast rise through the Met. Warm, funny, and unflappable under pressure, she is kept on ordinary policing duties while Peter is drawn away into a hidden world of magic, though she keeps a foot in his strange new case and helps him think it through.

First appears in chapter 2

A Detective Chief Inspector who is also the last officially sanctioned wizard in England and the keeper of the Folly, the London home of English magic. Courteous, reserved, and old-fashioned, he appears to be a fit man in early middle age but is a great deal older than he looks. Having policed supernatural crime almost single-handed for decades, he breaks a long pause on training and takes Peter on as his apprentice.

First appears in chapter 3

The silent housekeeper of the Folly, who cooks, cleans, and keeps the vast old building running without ever speaking a word. Pale, black-eyed, and unnervingly sharp-toothed, she is plainly not wholly human and has served the house and its wizards far longer than any ordinary servant could. She takes a proprietary, watchful interest in Peter once he moves in.

First appears in chapter 3

A Scottish gastroenterologist and self-taught cryptopathologist who performs the autopsies on people killed or altered by magic. Precise, calm, and endlessly interested, he shows Peter the physical marks that magic leaves on the brain and body, giving the Folly's work a forensic backbone.

First appears in chapter 4

The goddess of the tidal Thames below Teddington Lock, a Nigerian woman who drowned in the river in the 1950s and rose as its presiding spirit. Regal, shrewd, and surrounded by a court of daughters who embody London's smaller rivers, she rules the lower river with authority and is locked in a long, cold feud with the older god of its upper reaches.

First appears in chapter 4

The ancient spirit of the non-tidal river above London, an old countryman god attended by a court of sons. He withdrew from the capital during the centuries of plague and pollution and has never accepted the newer goddess who took up the tidal stretch in his absence. Peter is drawn into brokering between the two rival courts before their quarrel spills over into open conflict.

First appears in chapter 4

One of Mother Thames's daughters, the spirit of a modest river running through south-west London. Bold, teasing, and frankly curious about Peter, she pulls him deeper into the tangled affairs of the river families. The easy pull between them is complicated by the hard bargaining going on between the two courts of the Thames.

Also known as Mr Punch

First appears in chapter 8

The malevolent force behind a rash of sudden, brutal attacks in which unremarkable Londoners' faces twist and collapse as they are driven to kill and are themselves destroyed. It proves to be the vengeful ghost of Henry Pyke, a slighted eighteenth-century actor, ridden and amplified by a far older and more dangerous spirit: Mr Punch, the ancient spirit of riot and rebellion.