Just finished reading this novel last night, and I am still smiling. I can recommend it whole-heartedly to anyone who appreciates a fast-moving, tightly-written and intelligent urban fantasy novel. I can recommend it just as firmly to anyone who loves a solid police procedural. And I recommend it also to anyone familiar with the hard-edged trend of modern comics for adults, which includes a body of extremely impressive work from post-modern writers like Brian Michael Bendis, Kurt Busiek, Mark Waid, or Mark Millar.

More importantly, I can recommend it to anyone who appreciates the novel not only as a story, but as a craft.

Readers have been loving the work of Keith DeCandido since the late 1990's, although they seldom realize that he's the author of their favorite books. Over the years, he has written dozens of high-profile novels for famous franchise movies, television shows and games. If you bought a novelization some time after 1999 and found that it was actually well-written and entertaining, in other words, there's a fair chance that he wrote it--I'd say he was second only to Alan Dean Foster as a master of the form.

It's this amazing wealth of experience and skill that DeCandido brings to "SCPD: The Case of the Claw". This book is what DeCandido can do when he actually cuts loose and writes a book strictly for his own pleasure. The novel is set in a superheroic urban fantasy universe, and it is told from the point of view of the hard-working, long-suffering real cops who have to keep trying to make collars and cases in a world where crazy morons in long underwear are zipping, stomping, flying and flopping through the streets and skies. While the freakshows indulge in spectacularly destructive fisticuffs, the beat cops and homicide detectives are actually trying to work: investigating horrible cape-related crimes, throwing the wannabes and bunglers in the tank, eating awful cheap lunches and navigating the stormy waters of human relations with their parents, children, partners and friends.

There are echoes of many famous graphic novels in this little book. You can see the influence of Moore's "Watchmen" and his run of "Miracle Man", and of Busiek's "Marvels" in particular, as well as a hint of Bendis. There are certainly some pointed comments made in the course of the story about the events depicted in modern comics, and how they would look if they were witnessed by ordinary mortals who actually have to work for a living, not to mention uphold the legal system.

I'm not going to spoil a thing, because everyone deserves to read this book without having even the smallest part of it ruined. All I'm going to say is this: if writing a book can be compared to other forms of skilled labor, DeCandido is a master craftsman. Every join is clean, every surface is smoothly sanded, every line is a perfect parallel or perpendicular. It's no mystery why editors come back to him year after year, when they need the job done right.