87 Books Like London Under

This book was pivotal in sparking my fascination for the secretive and mysterious worlds beneath cities. 

It is the definitive guide to the vast assemblage of underground spaces, infrastructures, and nooks and crannies beneath the streets of London.

The coverage of the book is remarkable and will really help readers that are new to the theme to appreciate the huge range of spaces and infrastructures that lurk hidden far beneath London’s streets.

The book opened my eyes to culverted and hidden rivers; to sewers, water, and hydraulic pipes and tunnels under the Thames; and to underground transport systems, hidden power and communications grids, and labyrinths of bunkers.

Most important for me were the book’s amazing array of maps, lithographs, and photographs. 

I have always admired the pioneering Victorian engineers like Stephenson and Brunel, but especially Sir Joseph Bazalgette, who is less recognised and honoured than others, but whose genius provided a sewage system for London which improved sanitation, reduced disease, and death, allowed for the development of the Embankment and lasted for over a century! This book tells the story of those sewers and ones like them across the world and the remarkable men who designed and built them, many of them little known to their countrymen and women. It's absolutely fascinating, from the technical details to the social impact. It has turned me into a sewer aficionado.

OK, this isn't focused on the subterranean, but it does touch frequently upon underpasses and tunnels and is a personal journey, passing through the parts of London where the 'Ginger Line' - the London Overground railway -  runs. Sinclair uses his experiences to illuminate the changing city, a jumping-off point for explorations of places, their past, and present. His journey is bound up with writers and artists of all kinds. He, like Ackroyd, has an eye for the bizarre, but Sinclair has a sense of danger, real and modern, while Ackroyd summons the haunting past.

The System is the third book in the Baroque Cycle which begins with Quicksilver and continues with The Confusion. The whole Cycle is a rip-roaring, wildly inventive, and massively ambitious saga, ranging from the mid-seventeenth to the early eighteenth century, spanning the globe and casting an amazing set of characters from Leibnitz and Newton, to King George, Thomas Newcomen and William Teach the pirate. It's astonishing and has some of the best subterranean London episodes I've ever read, including an escape from Newgate Prison which takes in the Bank of England, a Roman Temple, and a medieval privy. Read all three books and hang on to your hats, it's a thrilling ride.

First of all, Drood is a fantastic trip into the macabre. And, because I love to weave actual truths into my stories, either real-life experiences or real encounters, I am fascinated that Simmons based his novel on the last five years of Charles Dickens's life. Whether this is entirely speculation or otherwise, this novel draws on the character found in Dickens's last and unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Simmons does precisely what I hope to do with my stories; draw the reader into my world and leave them wondering what parts were based on unexpected truths. 

This book is carefully researched and gives fascinating insights into the area around London’s docks. Rule begins her account in Roman times and takes the story through into the twenty-first century. She is committed to explaining how London’s docks, which employed around 100,000 men some sixty years ago, could so quickly have been swept away, and she shows huge sympathy for the people who lived and worked in the area. What I especially like is the range of sources she uses, from archaeological records to personal interviews.

The Alex Versus series's world-building, magic, and plots are very complex and layered. This is some seriously well thought out urban fantasy. 

The main character, Alex, is basically an instant seer, able to see multiple consequences of diving left versus right, shooting someone, running, etc. He doesn’t always have time to evaluate his choices before having to make a decision. And often, there’s no out without loss or a high price to be paid. 

The back story is cleverly woven into the plot and is never boring. This series has one of my favorite side characters ever written—an arachnid with startling insight and wisdom. 

This is a gorgeous book to be savoured slowly.

It is suffused with music throughout (and the nerd within me loves the reoccurring literary motifs and phrases that definitely lend a musical quality to the book) and took me back to lazy summer days as a teenager when I first moved to London and the city felt wide open with excitement and possibility.

This is another love story, but one about community, family and the first loves that we learn from our parents.

Much like Italian filmmakers managed to create the spaghetti western by riffing on the genre from an ocean away, English pulp writers created the Piccadilly Western: violent, cynical, sometimes even too edgy for its own good. The Adam Steele books often verge on tastelessness with their violence and insensitivity, but that’s relieved by a sort of dark humor—often groan-inducing. It can be a lot to take, but for those who prefer too much to too little… Adam Steele is definitely not too little. The first book has Civil War hero Steele going outlaw to avenge his murdered father, with his best friend as the lawman hot on his trail. 

Dominic wrote two very good crime books in a short series before publishing Vine Street.

I am including Vine Street on my list because, although it’s set in London and is therefore not ‘regional’, it was one of the great crime novels of 2021-22 and deserves to become a classic. I read this book before it was published, and I knew, like everyone else, that it was something special.

The story spans almost a century, from the seedy streets of London’s Soho in the 1930s, until the present day. There are some really well-researched and vividly depicted descriptions of police investigations in the 30s, and just for that it’s worth a read. But there’s also a twisting, mesmerizing plot that takes us all the way to the present.

What really distinguishes Vine Street, though, is the writing itself, which seems to echo the rhythms of the 1930s jazz clubs, and… show more.