Super City Cops #1: Avenging Amethyst (DeCandido)
(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)
This was another bonus Kickerstarter Edition, but the book is from 2016. It's a short novel of roughly 100 pages, but it was a quick read.
The first thing I was curious about was if the "Avenging" in the title was an adjective or a verb, but it's a little of both, I think. (And an allusion to The Avengers, perhaps?)
It takes place in Super City, a city with a lot of costumed heroes and villains running around, and quite a few names get dropped. But it's the story of the regular cops who deal with them, so it deconstructs the hero mythos a little.
The story jumps around between a pair of cops, a pair of detectives, and a cop who's been sidelined because of an accident and works in the evidence room because he doesn't want to go out on disability and be an ex-cop just yet.
Amethyst (a guy, by the way, unlike the tween in the old DC Comics comic), a flying hero who's been around for 25 years, falls from the sky, landing dead on a roof. Was he killed, or did the fall kill him? And why does the guy look like he's under 30?
Detectives Kristin Milewski ("Mi-love-ski") and Jorge Alvarado investigate. Also of interest are two police officers who are newly paired Officer Paul Fiorello and Officer Trevor Baptiste who keep running into costumed people. Fiorello seems to have abilities that he isn't aware of. Finally, there's Sean O'Malley, the guy on disability, who has the dumb luck of attracting the Amethyst gem out of the evidence lock-up where it lodges into his chest. His disability is no longer an issue, but he's also the new Amethyst.
The detectives catch the villain, but his lawyer argues for his release. For one thing, Amethyst is obviously alive. (Now, there's a new Old Glory, so why couldn't there be a new hero. After all, there is a body in the morgue.)
Everything works out, except for Sean. The Amethyst crystal has its downsides, which he'll probably learn about later in the series. There are three books (that I know of), and I have all three from the same Kickstarter event.
It was a quick read and enjoyable. If I had one quibble, it was the jumping back and forth with the chapters. A chapter with O'Malley ends when something happens outside. We switch to the detectives going to meet a CI. The chapter ends in the middle of an attack by the villain with the next chapter back to Amethyst at the moment we left. When that gets resolved, we're back with the detectives at the exact moment we left. I'm guessing there were two long chapters that needed to be broken up in a way that created tension.
Also, there's a little too much with the deconstructing of the supers mythos. As presented, I'd find it hard to believe that such a world could sustain itself, unless it did a better job in the past and the times have just changed. But there have obviously been supers for at least 25 years, so you'd think some of the legal issues and ramifications would've been worked out already.
Not that any of that will stop me from reading the next book. Soon.
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