40 Years a Cop, Now He Plots Their Days

•  Brian Brady is creating a multi-part detective series

•  “As a native San Franciscan, I enjoy writing about my favorite city” 

Remember Nash Bridges? How about the Continental Op?  Sam Spade? Or, surely, Dirty Harry.  All were — or are — fictional detectives working the crime beats of San Francisco.

They were created by authors who set new standards for the genre, including Dashiell Hammett who could be considered the foundational author of detectives and the “city by the bay.”

It might be time to add Brian Brady to the list of authors who have picked the hilly and often foggy streets of San Francisco as the locale for their books. But unlike many of the other authors, Mr. Brady knows real crime and the real streets of San Francisco.  

He’s been a cop and even chief of policies suburban Novato.  Add a stint as head of security for NBC Universal in Hollywood and you have a background that has now created two San Francisco-based crime thrillers with a third headed into its final editing.

His new book is “Hiding in Plain Sight, (Palmetto Publishing, April 2024).  It is the second of a planned trilogy as he develops his characters and plots. The first book is “Oh. What a Tangled Web.”

“As a native San Franciscan, I enjoy writing about my favorite city,” Mr. Brady write. “The city is rich in architecture, sports, tradition, and characters.”

He says his characters are based on real people with a bit of literary license.