The Hanging Tree characters

Appears from the start

Detective constable and apprentice wizard at the Folly, now an experienced hand at cases where London's police work meets its magic. He is in an established relationship with the river goddess Beverley Brook, and carries the twin weights of the last few years: the hunt for the Faceless Man, and the betrayal of his friend and fellow apprentice Lesley May, who left with the enemy. This case begins with an obligation - a favour owed to Lady Tyburn coming due.

Appears from the start

Master of the Folly, the last officially sanctioned English wizard, and one of the most dangerous practitioners alive - a fact usually hidden behind impeccable tailoring and courtesy. With the Faceless Man's organization growing bolder, Nightingale is increasingly willing to show what a fully trained wartime wizard can actually do.

Appears from the start

Goddess of a south-west London river, daughter of Mother Thames, and Peter's partner in an increasingly settled relationship - one that quietly entangles the Folly with the river courts' politics. Confident, funny, and entirely at ease with who she is, she keeps Peter connected to a magical London that predates and outranks his official one.

Also known as Lady Ty

Appears from the start

The most formidable of Mother Thames's daughters: goddess of the buried river Tyburn, Oxford-educated, superbly connected across government and the City, and a long-standing sceptic of the Folly and of Peter in particular. When a death at an exclusive Knightsbridge address threatens to touch her teenage daughter Olivia, she calls in the favour Peter owes her - and expects results that keep her family out of it.

First appears in chapter 2

A detective constable and one of the small circle of Met officers read in on the uncanny, who has become Peter's regular partner on cases the rest of the force prefers not to understand. Calm, dry, and quietly ambitious, a hijab-wearing Muslim officer with excellent instincts, she handles the weird with a notable lack of fuss.

First appears in chapter 4

A dapper, fox-like fixture of the demi-monde - sharp-dressed, self-interested, and reliably untrustworthy - who surfaces claiming access to an item of enormous value to every magical faction in London: a lost manuscript attributed to Isaac Newton. Dealing with Reynard means accepting that he is always selling something, including the people he deals with.

First appears in chapter 6

An elderly but vigorous practitioner of healing magic who learned her art entirely outside the Folly's male, Newtonian tradition and regards that institution with well-earned suspicion. Her interest in the case's central artifact is personal and principled at once, and she is a reminder that the Folly's official monopoly on British magic was always a polite fiction.

First appears in chapter 6

Lady Helena's daughter and student: athletic, capable, and trained in her mother's tradition of magic rather than the Folly's. She approaches Peter's world with curiosity and a certain competitive edge, and proves willing to operate in the thick of events rather than from the sidelines.

Appears from the start

Peter's former friend and fellow apprentice, who betrayed the Folly at Skygarden and vanished with the Faceless Man - the plainest reading of her price being the repair of the face she lost to possession. Still a superb police officer under whatever loyalty she now holds, she remains active in London on her new master's business, and any operation touching his interests risks meeting her.

Also known as The Faceless Man

Appears from the start

London's hidden black magician: trained out of Geoffrey Wheatcroft's illegal Oxford teaching, wealthy, organized, and ruthless, his identity still concealed behind a blurring glamour after years of Folly pursuit. The Skygarden harvest and the recruitment of Lesley May were his work. He remains the Folly's principal quarry, and the gap between hunting him and being able to name him is the series' central open wound.