Police Work is Boring. Just Ask Gelan and Wynhod.

Honestly, investigations into crime are tedious tasks.  Television and movies would have us believe otherwise.  All these shows like CSI, Criminal Minds, Law and Order ... everything gets wrapped up nice and pretty in the span of an hour.  And it’s exciting, with the bad guys shooting at the good guys, mental puzzles that would stump Einstein, and a thrilling chase scene here and there.  Police work looks plenty exciting on the screen when it comes from Hollywood.

In actuality, it’s hours of monotonous desk work, days of waiting on lab results, weeks of waiting for red tape to be cleared, and months when nothing ... NOTHING ... new comes up to move a case along.  Cases can extend into years with false leads going nowhere.  Sometimes they never get solved.

You’ll find this slow grind is very much the issue in Clan Beginnings:  Clan and Conviction.  When we join Gelan and Wynhod in the first part of the book, Gelan is investigating the Delir drug ring, as he has for months.  He’s the second lead investigator that’s handled the case, in fact.  Delir has already defeated the first one.  It’s been dragging along for quite some time.  Several things happen all at once to push this long-stagnant investigation into overdrive at last:  Wynhod becomes Gelan’s partner, a savvy criminal psychologist with new insights is assigned to help (Krijero), and a lucky break finally comes along. 

In the second part of the book, a new drug called Frenzy makes itself a pain in our clan’s collective ass.  This one stretches for two years before any headway is made.  There’s a lot of bitching about sitting at a computer doing research (Wynhod), because that’s the name of the game in most cases.  Interspersed with their Frenzy case are other cases that are no less tedious to our intrepid trio.  It’s no wonder they go in for extreme sports like mountain climbing, primitive hunting, and spear fishing with man-eating rizpahs.  These poor guys have to do something to blow off steam and get the adrenaline pumping.

Yes, police work, especially the investigative part, is mostly dull stuff.  However, Clan and Conviction skips over broad swaths of time, so don’t be worried about sitting next to Wynhod and Gelan, your eyes glazed over as you spend hour after hour on a stakeout watching people walk in and out of a supposedly closed-down club.  You get to miss all that stuff and go quickly to the shoot outs, hostage negotiations, and races against time.   Plus there’s that matter of new intimate relationships and sex.  Yeah, that helps pass the hours too.

Tentative release set for May 2013.