While Winter’s Gifts is a spin-off of Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series, it really reminds me more of Simon R. Green’s Ishmael Jones mysteries. Neither is a bad thing in my opinion, a spin-off or a similarity to Green’s series.

FBI agent Kimberley Reynolds introduces herself with a little background, where she was on 9/11 (in college), and her jobs before she joined the FBI. She was raised by a fundamentalist mother who doesn’t trust the government. Kimberley has been to London on an assignment and learned some about dealing with the supernatural from a British colleague, Detective Constable Peter Grant. She can handle body dismemberment and unusual happenings, but cringes when people curse.

She’s asked to go to Wisconsin when her department, the one that handles the weird, the supernatural, and the genuine occult, receives a strange message from a retired FBI agent, Patrick Henderson. He asks the operator to pass on his message that there’s a potential X-Ray Sierra India developing. There are strange occurrences in Wisconsin, and according to Kimberley’s source, Cymbeline Moonglum, a former witch, there are rumors of animal spirits returning.

January isn’t the best time to go to Wisconsin, and Kimberley finds that the local police station in Eloise has been flattened by an ice tornado. The town is cutoff soon after she arrives, and she has only a few people to rely on. She finds that Patrick Henderson has been abducted by something that left behind traces of magic. Scott Walker from the BIA offers his help. Librarian Sadie Clarkson is more reluctant to share information including the journal of an expedition from Virginia that went missing in 1843. Meteorologist William Boyd is the most helpful with stories of the past and connections to the current strange weather.

As Reynolds questions neighbors and survivors of strange events, the sightings and stories lead to snow monsters, zombies that can rip through walls and abduct people. With little help, Kimberley Reynolds knows it’s on her to save the town, and the stories, of Eloise, Wisconsin.

I love these urban fantasies that combine legends, magic, and survival with everyday life. Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files were my first encounter with urban fantasy. Ben Aaronovitch’s Winter’s Gifts is an excellent entry in the genre.

Ben Aaronovitch’s website is https://www.benaaronovitch.com/

Winter’s Gifts by Ben Aaronovitch. Subterranean Press, 2023. 181p.

FTC Full Disclosure – I bought the Kindle edition.