There is also the chance this is your first time reading a John Jordan mystery. On Michael’s behalf, I welcome you to his literary world, and hope it will not be your only excursion therein.

I say all of that to explain that I, in comparison to most every reader I have met at one of Michael’s signings, am a relative newcomer to the character of John Jordan.

When I first met Michael, Power in the Blood was his only John Jordan novel.

When I finally got around to reading one, there were ten.

It’s not that I didn’t read any of Michael’s work in that time. On the contrary, I had read all of the Jimmy Riley “Big” books, Double Exposure, Cataclysmos, and several non-series titles. I had narrated the audiobook for Meaning Every Moment, and produced several other audiobooks for him. We had worked on a play (The Big Hello) and a short film (Spilled Blood). I was well acquainted with the Listerverse.

Except for that John Jordan guy.

I can’t say what had ever kept me from reading one. I had meant to. Like the dinner guests in Luis Bunuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, who had every intention of sitting down to enjoy a meal together but kept getting interrupted, I was always finding something standing in my way, blocking the path. Sometimes it was another of Michael’s projects on which I was working. Sometimes it was one of my own.

The first time I reached the last page of a John Jordan book, I knew what the readers I had met at Michael’s signings had felt, some for the fourth, fifth, or maybe tenth time. I had been treated to something special. It was no ordinary yarn.

I say “yarn” because, in some sense, that’s the foundation of the novel as an art form. It very often can be boiled down to a novelist saying, “Hey, let me tell you this story I thought up. I think you’ll like it.” There are certain required elements: a setting, a plot, a protagonist. All those things you learned in English or theater classes. The rest, very often, is just a measure of how well it’s dressed up and presented.

What I felt when reading a John Jordan book was something else. It was a chance to observe an author so in touch with his character—his creation—that it transcended the flea circus of storytelling. I felt like I was reading about a real person.

John Jordan is not a cookie-cutter caricature. He’s not a brooding loner, too devoted to the job to ever have time for a family. He doesn’t play by his own rules. He’s not a loose cannon, above the law, with a death wish, or in possession of any other silly trait that lesser characters rely on to seem interesting.