

My father was Sheriff’s Deputy for Los Angeles County. In the Craig Lancaster interview, he continues:

Tyler Dilts is the son of a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department detective. While there is no romance as such between Beckett and his partner Jennifer Tanaka, there is a closeness and mutual consideration that could potentially develop into one. Yet he works well with his colleagues in the LBPD and with both witnesses and even suspects. He himself lives a life of occasionally disabling physical pain.

What I like about the Danny Beckett novels is the empathy he feels for the characters with whom he comes into contact. He knows that it is his greatest strength as a detective, so he can’t bring himself to let go, even though he’d be healthier and happier if he did.Īs for the fourth book, I am reading that now. It’s a quality that is certainly not healthy for him, but it keeps him connected to the victims of the crimes he investigates and allows him to maintain a sense of empathy. Danny’s the kind of detective who carries the weight of the past with him. In an interview with Craig Lancaster, Dilts describes his novel thus:Īt the opening of the new novel, Danny’s come to terms with much of what was haunting him in the first two books, but a murder he investigates-a homeless man who is burned to death by a group of teenagers-tests his resolve, especially in mourning his late wife, who also died by burning. It is about the murder of a homeless man. In the second book, Danny is sidelined with pain in his hand to his shoulder for an entire year, but he manages to go on.Ī Cold and Broken Hallelujah was the first Dilts I had read, in Cusco, Peru, of all places. In the first novel, Tyler’s wife dies in a car crash on Intersate-5. To date, there are four novels in the Long Beach homicide series:Īll four feature Long Beach Homicide Detective Danny Beckett and his partner, Jennifer Tanaka. It is an interesting city in its own right, and it is large and diverse enough to sustain a series of crime novels set within its borders. Long Beach is the 36th largest city in the United States, and the 7th largest in the State of California. There have been writers about Beverly Hills and Hollywood before, but both places are way too enshrouded in their own myths. I find that exciting because he writes about an interesting locale about which most people know very little. An Up-and-Coming Police Procedural Mystery WriterĪctually Tyler Dilts is more of a Long Beach writer than an L.A.
