VISITING DIGNITARY - Keith R. A. DeCandido

GUYS I WANT A REALLY WARM WELCOME for a very interesting author.  He's clever, he's charming, he's eminently readable.  (Well, his work is.  You get the point.  I'm not sure if he is actually.  Keith, do you have any tattoos?  MANY tattoos?  Inquiring minds want to know.  Of course, if not, we could just go for palm reading.)  ANYWAY, without further digression or ado, I present:

KEITH R.A. DeCANDIDO

(APPLAUSE AND CHEERS FROM THE GALLERY)

OH and guys.  Prizes to random commenters.  Be sure to leave your e-mails.  :)

FANTASTICAL COPS
by Keith R.A. DeCandido
I've always been a huge fan of policeprocedurals. I think it can be blamed on watching Hill StreetBlues at an impressionable young age (I was 12 when the showdebuted). Probably my favorite nonfiction book of all time is DavidSimon's Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, the book thatserved as the direct basis of the NBC series Homicide: Life on theStreets, and the indirect inspiration for Simon's HBO TV seriesThe Wire.
What fascinates me are the elements youoften don't see on most cop shows (though you did see them onHSB, Homicide, and The Wire, as well as suchshows as DaVinci's Inquest and The Shield), to wit, thepolitics, the difficulties, the frustrations. What I like are storiesabout cops who aren't (necessarily) noble paragons of order andjustice who view the job as a calling (the Dragnet model), nordo I like stories where the crimefighting tools are all available,reliable, and instant (the CSI model). I prefer it when thegood guys don't always win, when the cases are messy and difficult,and when the lab results aren't always fast or accurate ordefinitive. And I prefer it when the cops have to deal with theday-to-day realities of budgetary and political expediency instead ofmagically having everything they need.
Plus, of course, you have theinterrogations. There are few things more fun to read thaninterrogations, a cop and a suspect doing a verbal fencing match asthe former tries to get the latter to talk through deceit andmanipulation and cleverness. Simon put it best in his Homicidebook: the interrogating detective is "a salesman, a huckster asthieving and silver-tongued as any man who ever moved used cars oraluminum siding—more so, in fact, when you consider that he'sselling long prison terms to customers who have no genuine need forthe product."
I've always wanted to writeprocedurals, which fall under the mystery rubric, but I'm at heart ascience fiction/fantasy writer. Luckily, the two genres mix quitewell—SF/F is a genre of setting, where mystery is a genre of plot.

My very first novel, Spider-Man:Venom's Wrath in 1998 (written with José R. Nieto), hadSpider-Man working with NYPD detectives on a case—and I wroteanother Spidey novel (solo this time) in 2005, Down These MeanStreets, that also showed the hero collaborating with New York'sFinest. I did other tie-ins that brought cops into the storyline(Supernatural: Nevermore, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Blackout),and I always tried to follow the example provided by Hill Streetand by Simon's amazing book.
(I also wrote a CSI: NY book,Four Walls, which proved an interesting challenge, as thatfranchise exists in a world where DNA tests happen instantaneouslyand lab techs carry guns and solve cases. I did, however, have fungiving one murder scene the trace evidence of a blackcotton/polyester blend fiber. As anyone who lives in New York knows,that does nothing to narrow the suspect pool, since everyone'round here wears black...)
It was so much fun to insert cops intoMarvel's New York, or amidst the Winchester Brothers'monster-hunting, or the demon-infested world of Vampire Slayers, thatI needed to do it some more.
Hence, my two original series.
Dragon Precinct (2004, reissuedin 2011) and its sequels, Unicorn Precinct (2011) and thespring 2012 release Goblin Precinct, puts cops in a verytraditional fantasy setting, one that wouldn't be out of place inTolkien or your average Dungeons & Dragons game. The port city ofCliff's End is a crossroads of humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes, andhalflings, and the Castle Guard is tasked with maintaining law andorder—including a squad of detectives who solve the bigger crimesin the city-state. There's an M.E. who inspects the crime scene—amagical examiner on loan from the Brotherhood of Wizards—andinterference from politicians who are more concerned with expediencythan crime-solving.
The crimes themselves are, of course,fantastical variants on what we come to expect from our mysteries: aserial rapist who uses a store-bought spell to turn himselfinvisible; a succubus whose disguise as a human interferes with theM.E.'s "peel-back" spell; a magickal drug that causespeople to overdose; bank robbers who use glamours to disguisethemselves; and so on.
The other series is called SCPD—thefirst book, The Case of the Claw, is now out digitally, withthe trade paperback edition due shortly, and the second, AvengingAmethyst, is in the works. It's about the adventures of the SuperCity Police Department. Like Metropolis or Gotham City, Super City isa fictional environment that is full to bursting with superheroes:the Superior Six, the Terrific Trio, the Bruiser, the Cowboy,Spectacular Man, and more.
But this isn't their story. It'sthe story of how the cops deal with the property damage, theinsufficient evidence, the nightmare of solving the "murder"of the Clone Master who has multiple versions of himself, and, ofcourse, heroes who don't testify in court, lest they risk theirsecret identities. The Cowboy stops a purse snatcher and ties him toa lamppost, but by the time the cops arrive the Cowboy and the victimare long gone, and the suspect must be kicked for lack of evidence.The Bolt is arrested on a DUI with no ID; when he sobers up, he blowsa hole in the holding-cell wall. When the Superior Six battle theBrute Squad, one of the latter misplaces a ray-gun that is found byan abused woman who uses it on her husband when next he beats her.
The best part of all of these? Writingthe interrogations. Whether it's Lieutenants Danthres Tresyllione andTorin ban Wyvald getting Bogg the Barbarian to admit to who he andhis friends were after in Dragon Precinct, or Detectives PeterMacAvoy and Kristin Milewski talking to a bunch of high school kidswho may or may not have witnessed a murder in The Case of theClaw, the give-and-take of the interview process is some of themost compelling stuff to write—and, I hope, to read.
(To purchase SCPD: The Case of theClaw, Dragon Precinct, or Unicorn Precinct, go towww.DeCandido.net, where there are purchasing links for Amazon, B&N,Smashwords, and directly from the publisher—Crossroad Press forSCPD, Dark Quest Books for the Precinct books.)
Keith R.A. DeCandido is the author of 45 novels, as well as a mess of short stories, comicbooks, novellas, and more. In 2009, the International Association ofMedia Tie-in Writers granted him a Lifetime Achievement Award for hisbody of licensed work in multiple media universes. His other recentwork besides the procedurals mentioned above include Dungeons &Dragons: Dark Sun: Under the Crimson Sun, Guilt in Innocence: A Taleof the Scattered Earth, the post-"Peacekeeper Wars"Farscape graphic novels, -30- (with Steven Savile), andstories in the anthologies VWars (edited by Jonathan Maberry),Dragon's Lure, Tales from the House Band, Liar Liar, andBad-Ass Faeries 4: It's Elemental. Friend him on Facebook(facebook.com/kradec), follow him on Twitter (@KRADeC), read his blog(kradical.livejournal.com), and listen to his twice-monthly podcastDead Kitchen Radio (deadkitchenradio.mevio.com).