An Obscure Grave

A beautiful victim. An elusive criminal. A part time policeman. Three pieces of the mystery that is Jim Doherty's AN OBSCURE GRAVE. Dan Sullivan, UC Berkeley undergrad and part-time cop, is working the tip-line for a missing-persons case that is getting national attention. DeeDee Merryweather, beautiful Cal co-ed, has disappeared. The prevailing theory is that she's been abducted. But one of the tipsters, an anonymous caller claiming psychic powers, believes it's a murder, because, she says, she's sensed DeeDee's corpse buried in a makeshift tomb. If she's right, the Berkeley Police and the FBI are on the wrong track. But will a part-time reservist be able to put them on the right one that leads to DeeDee's obscure grave? And, from there, to her killer? Jim Doherty, author of JUST THE FACTS: TRUE TALES OF COPS AND CRIMINALS, crafts a challenging mystery within this spot on police procedural. AN OBSCURE GRAVE, his first novel, was a finalist for a CWA Debut Dagger Award, competing with hundreds of entries from all over the world.

A cop for more than 20 years, JIM DOHERTY hasserved American law enforcement at the federal, state, and local levels,policing everything from inner city streets to rural dirt roads, from collegecampuses to military bases, from suburban parks to urban railroad yards
 
An Obscure Grave, his first novel, isset in Berkeley, CA, where he began hislaw enforcement career.  It's a policeprocedural featuring Dan Sullivan, a character Jim has developed in a number ofshort stories. It involves the part-time cop and full-time Cal undergrad in amissing persons case that is getting a lot of media attention. Is it anabduction? Or murder? An Obscure Gravewas a finalist for the Debut Dagger Award given by the British Crime WritersAssociation.
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His first book Just the Facts - True Talesof Cops & Criminals, was a finalist for the Macavity Award in thenon-fiction category. One of the articles included in the book, "Blood forOil," about the Osage Indian Murder Case, the FBI's first high-profileinvestigation, won a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America for BestShort Non-Fiction. 

In addition, Jim served for several years as the police technical advisor forthe venerable cops-n-robbers comic strip DickTracy, and will be a guest writer on strip for a short, two week"Minute Mystery" sequence.

Jim is also the author of RaymondChandler- Master of American Noir, a series of lectures about thehard-boiled pioneer, that was used in an on-line class on Chandler, which Jim alsotaught.

He met his lovely wife, Katy, after moving to Chicago (Dick Tracy's city),and continues to live in the Midwest, where he is still aserving policeman.