Mr Vandemar pulled the rat from the blade and began to munch on it, thoughtfully, head first. Mr Croup slapped it out of his hands. ‘Stop that’ he said. Mr Vandemar put his knife away, a little sullenly. ‘Buck up,’ hissed Mr Croup, encouragingly. ‘There will always be another rat. Now: onward. Things to do. People to damage.’
 
Under the streets of London there's a world most people could never even dream of.
 
A city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels, and pale girls in black velvet.
 
Richard Mayhew is a young businessman who is about to find out more than he bargained for about this other London. A single act of kindness catapults him out of his safe and predictable life and into a world that is at once eerily familiar and yet utterly bizarre.
 
There's a girl named Door, an Angel called Islington, an Earl who holds Court on the carriage of a Tube train, a Beast in a labyrinth, and dangers and delights beyond imagining...And Richard, who only wants to go home, is to find a strange destiny waiting for him below the streets of his native city.