Urban Fantasy Detectives

topic posted Mon, October 24, 2005 - 11:00 AM by  Unsubscribed
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Has anyone noticed the amount of urban fantasy with a mystery theme? Often the detective is a magic user of some sort or a fatasy creature (vampire).

I've been reading a series by Jim Butcher called "The Dresden files" where the main character is a wizard with an office in modern setting and a detective of sorts. Pure pulp fiction but lots of fun with snappy and funny dialoge just like the old "gum shoes" of old.

I've always love Sherlock Homes stuff (new actor on PBS for him by the way) and this combination of vampires/werewolfs/wizards with murder mystery is lots of fun.
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  • Re: Urban Fantasy Detectives

    Thu, November 3, 2005 - 3:16 PM
    Try Glen Cooks "Garret Files" series. I've read "Sweet Silver Blues", "Cold Copper Tears", and a few of the others. Good reading and in just the vein you were discussing... Hard boiled gumshoe (Garrett) meets fantasy world.
  • Re: Urban Fantasy Detectives

    Thu, November 3, 2005 - 7:54 PM
    The Anita Blake series by Laurell K. Hamilton fall nicely into that category. They're actually considered horror, cuz they can get really bloody. The first eight books are excellent, gripping, amazing reads. Number nine and on, they become more erotica than anything else, which just annoys me to no end. She gave up exciting, action packed stories for sex with the occasional bit of a little thing called 'plot.'

    But I highly, highly recommend the first eight. For those who don't know, Anita is an 'animator' (i.e. someone who animates corpses) who is drawn into various supernatural adventures/mysteries. The first one, 'Guilty Pleasures,' deals with finding a serial vampire killer (as in someone who's killing several vamps, not a vamp who's killing several people).

    In the Anita books, vampires and various kinds of lycanthropes are legal citizens complete with rights and expected to obey the laws. She is also an executioner of those vamps/weres/other supernatural people who go rogue. There's only one punishment if a vamp (or other being) break the law: death. They're too powerful to hold in prison, so Anita gets a court order and hunts them down.

    The Anita Blake books are some of my favorites. Well, at least the first eight are.

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