Humans and elves, dwarves and gnomes, wizards and warriors all live and do business in the thriving, overcrowded port city of Cliff's End, to say nothing of the tourists and travellers who arrive by land and sea, passing through the metropolis on matters of business or pleasure--or on quests. The hard-working, under-appreciated officers of the Cliff's End Castle Guard work day and night to maintain law and order as best they can.
Gan Brightblade is one of the world's greatest heroes and a personal friend of the Lord and Lady of Cliff's End. So when he's brutally murdered in grubby lodgings in Dragon Precinct, on the eve of a great quest, the Captain of the Guard puts his two best investigators on the case. The half-elf Danthres Tresyllione and ex-soldier Torin ban Wyvald soon discover that the crime scene is empty of any forensic evidence--physical or magickal. They have no clues, and heat is on.
The Lord and Lady want their friend's murder solved--now. The populace is mourning the loss of a great hero. The ever-unhelpful Brotherhood of Wizards could take over the case at any minute. And then another member of Brightblade's party turns up dead....
Author Biography:
KEITH R.A. DeCANDIDO is a white male in his late forties, approximately 200 pounds. He was last seen in the wilds of the Bronx, New York, though he is often sighted in other locales. Usually he is armed with a laptop computer, which some have classified as a deadly weapon. Through use of this laptop, he has inflicted more than fifty novels, as well as an indeterminate number of short stories, comic books, nonfiction, novellas, and anthologies on an unsuspecting reading public. Many of these are set in the milieus of television shows, movies, games, and comic books, among them Star Trek, Cars, Doctor Who, Supernatural, World of Warcraft, Orphan Black, Alien, Marvel Comics, and many more. We have received information confirming that more stories involving Torin, Danthres, and the city-state of Cliff's End can be found in the novels Unicorn Precinct, Goblin Precinct, Gryphon Precinct, and the forthcoming Mermaid Precinct, Phoenix Precinct, and Manticore Precinct, as well as the short-story collection Tales from Dragon Precinct. His other recent crimes against humanity include the urban fantasy novel A Furnace Sealed; the Orphan Black coffee-table book Classified Clone Report; the Alien novel Isolation; the Tales of Asgard trilogy of prose novels featuring Marvel's Thor, Sif, and the Warriors Three; short stories in the anthologies Aliens: Bug Hunt, the two Baker Street Irregulars volumes, The Best of Bad-Ass Faeries, The Best of Defending the Future, Joe Ledger: Unstoppable, Nights of the Living Dead, The X-Files: Trust No One, among others; and writing about pop culture for Tor.com and Patreon. If you see DeCandido, do not approach him, but call for back-up immediately. He is often seen in the company of a suspicious-looking woman who goes by the street name of Wrenn, as well as several as-yet-unidentified cats. A full dossier can be found at DeCandido.net.
