Shades of London

About the Shades of London series

American teenager Rory Deveaux arrives in London for a boarding-school year just as a killer starts recreating Jack the Ripper's 1888 murders across Whitechapel, down to the exact dates and locations. When Rory becomes the sole witness to one of the attacks, she discovers she can see something no one else can -- because a near-death experience has left her able to perceive ghosts, and the modern Ripper turns out to be one. That gift pulls her into a hidden squad of ghost-hunting police operatives, and the series follows her as she's trained into their ranks while the copycat killer's true nature -- and motive -- unspools across the following books.

Maureen Johnson grounds the supernatural premise in a lot of real London geography and Ripper-case history, and lets Rory's voice -- dryly funny, Louisiana-raised, permanently a little out of her depth among London's ghost police -- carry a story that gets progressively darker as the series goes on. The Boy in the Smoke is a shorter prequel novella following squad member Stephen before Rory ever arrives, best read after the main trilogy since it trades on relationships readers won't yet know.

The series ends on a cliffhanger in The Shadow Cabinet, and Johnson has confirmed no further Shades of London books are planned, leaving a vocal fandom still hoping for a conclusion.

How to read this series

Read the numbered books in order -- The Name of the Star, The Madness Underneath, The Shadow Cabinet -- since the Ripper-copycat plot and Rory's ghost-hunting training escalate continuously across all three with no good jumping-on point after book one. Save The Boy in the Smoke, a prequel novella centered on squad member Stephen, for after the trilogy: it was published between books two and three but is written for readers who already know the characters, and reveals things the main books withhold. Be aware going in that The Shadow Cabinet ends on an unresolved cliffhanger with no confirmed continuation.