Paranormal Romance & Urban Fantasy discussion

Its such a crutch when the protagonist is a cop, detective, or private investigator.

How many attributes are you gonna cram into your main character?

Shes a psychic half-demon daughter of an exiled Duke of Hell, and is also the second half of the millennia old prophecy predicting the nature and timing of Armageddon. PLUS SHES A FUCKING PI! WHY NOT RIGHT?

I guess I feel like authors who use this gimmick must not know how to write an original character, because literally every cop-type protagonist sounds, feels, and reacts exactly the same. Across all books ever written. The cop type is probably the most set in stone caricature of them all.

Anyway I am venting because I just opened up a book description and lost interest in the first 3 word, because the 3rd word was PI.

The best PNR books I have ever read had protagonists who had absolutely nothing to do with the law, the government, private contract work, or any sort of organization official or not. The best setting, imo, for a pnr is to begin with a normal person living what ever life they have been given to live.

Yes I am! Lol they're always "THE best blah blah, detective from homicide, Knows five languages, can pilot a plane, has moves like Jackie Chan, can shoot like a sniper, etc etc etc....I stopped reading them after the novels basically repeated themselves. BUT... I'm still not tired of heroes that are military 'cuz they're hot. I might be a little biased but my Dear Hubby is military XD

The best military hero is an ex military hero, trying to adjust to civilian life.

Gets caught up in supernatural weirdness.

I would read that. :-P

I'm pretty much sick of all these cops,investigator, PI, law office books myself. If I want to go through a crime-scene I'll just watch CSI. I'm not saying there bad or shouldn't be written, just seems way overly done now. You've completely lost that originality for that subject matter, as well as what Patricia mentioned above about their abilities. Having a MC that is in law enforcement thats capable of all this stuff and only like 25 is a bit outlandish.

A lot of authors both mainstream and indie are jumping on this evil government/law enforcement MC idea though. We're probably going to see a huge increase of these books for another year or two at least.

I am, it's a little overdone, but if there is a new twist it can be interesting. For example, in the early Anita Blake books when I actually enjoyed them, I loved how she was on a special paranormal team and used her gifts of necromancy. Kara Gillian series has the MC part of a regular team but that takes a backseat in a hurry with later sequels, so it can just depend.

I think a lot of the time it's an easy excuse to have them in the middle of crime scenes. But yeah, it's been overdone.

I think it's a bit of a crutch. The author wants to inject their main character in to a crime/murder situation, the natural inclination is to give them a job that would make it seem natural for them to be in that situation.