Supernatural Crimes Unit: NYPD

From USA Today bestselling author Keith R.A. DeCandido comes a paranormal mystery of epic proportions. When Detective Domenica Kiernan solved the murder of a mayor’s aide–killed by a vampire–she never imagined she’d find herself at the vanguard of the NYPD’s latest special squad: the Supernatural Crimes Unit. Tasked with closing cases involving magic and monsters, the SCU has dealt with a shape-changing domovoy committing assault in Chelsea, the murder of a kappa on City Island, a thieving Taotie in Chinatown–and their latest: two murder victims whose corpses have been liquefied by a powerful spell. Kiernan and the rest of the SCU must find the connection between the two victims and figure out who cast the spell that destroyed the corpses. Soon, their investigation leads to a malevolent magic-user who yearns for limitless power, whose plans go far beyond disposing of dead bodies. He’ll stop at nothing to achieve his goals–including kidnapping Bobby, Kiernan’s ten-year-old son. The SCU has no choice: They must go rogue to find Bobby and stop the wizard before he unleashes hell on Earth!

This book was provided to me by the publisher to solicit a review, so here it is:

By one of my favored authors, Keith R. A. DeCandido, the basic premise is familiar and many other authors have done in the past with franchises like BPRD, The Dresden Files, The Laundry Files, and Harmony Black. DeCandido has a good take on the genre with a investigative unit in a world that was only just recently exposed to the supernatural and still has a ton to prove to the community they’re hoping to protect. I follow the author on all the social media platforms and read his blog in the hope to catch more Star Trek content, so I think I know more about him than the average reader, so let me just say there’s a lot of self inserts in the book, but none of them are even remotely distracting or rise to the level of being Mary Sues. I will say that I was distracted every time that the characters would have a meal because the food, locations, and experience were taken to Tolkien-esque levels of descriptive details that took me away from the story I was most interested in, which was the evil bad guy that was scheming to do some serious damage to an unsuspecting city and how the heroes were going to deal with the situation.

The story resolves in an entirely satisfying way and I’m hopeful we’ll see more from the series!

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