Supernatural Crimes Unit: NYPD is an urban fantasy police procedural comedy series starter by Keith R.A. DeCandido. Released 28th Oct 2025 by Blackstone, it's 390 pages and is available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout.
Tongue in cheek, with sarcasm and snark to spare, the author does a good turn with rapid dialogue, law enforcement banter and camaraderie alongside professional rivalry, and workplace humor (some quite gritty and off-color). The difference is that these cops are chasing vampires, werewolves, slime monsters, and some lesser known elements from folklore.
Although not egregious (especially for the UF/procedural genre), there are some mild content warnings for drug use, body horror, and kidnapping of a minor child. There's also standard language and violence warnings. For fans of Hearne and Butcher, this fits in the same general area, and compares well with them. The author isn't quite as polished, and hasn't met a pun he can bear to edit out (see book's subtitle), but overall it's engaging, quite funny in places, and full of cultural references to food, language, and people from all over NYC. There are gender positive representations included in the book which the author manages not to club readers with.
Four stars. Enjoyable, funny, moderately diverting, and readable. It would be a good choice for public or home library acquisition. First book in a series, though no current publishing info for book 2 is easily obtainable; it would make a fine buddy read.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
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