An Investigation Into Unnatural Deaths in London in the Years 1768 - 1810 by Dr John Polidori

Liberty’s: thanks to The Culture Trip

Title: An Investigation Into Unnatural Deaths in London in the Years 1768 - 1810

Author: Dr John Polidori

Publisher: Not known 

Source book: Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch (Rivers of London #2)

Dr Polidori, also the author of Meditations on the Matter of Life and Death which features in Rivers of London, has penned this useful tome about unnatural deaths. Our hero, PC Peter Grant consults it when apparently random jazz musicians keep dropping dead. The book weighs over a kilo; which obviously means you’d struggle to read it in the bath.

Also featuring in Moon Over Soho are Essays on the Metaphysical by John Cartwright who never uses a single syllable word if he can find a suitable polysyllabic word to use instead. 

And there’s a copy of A Modern Commentary on the Great Work (presumably Sir Isaac Newton’s great work on magic) by Cuthbertson in a packing case belonging to murder victim Jason Dunlop. Written in 1897, this book on magic which has the great merit of being written in English rather than Latin, had been liberated at some stage from the Bodleian Library in Oxford, along with 6 other books on magic.

Jason Dunlop, a successful freelance journalist and member of the Groucho Club, had apparently written more than one novel, but unfortunately we are given no titles. However, the first was dedicated thus: “For Master Geoffrey, from whom I gained my true education”. It’s an important clue in Peter Grant’s investigation.

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