Over on Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist, you can find an excerpt from The Dirty Streets of Heaven by Tad Williams. This is being publicized as William’s first foray into Urban Fantasy (though I wonder if what they’d consider The War of the Flowers, if not Urban Fantasy…?) and seems like quite a departure from an author who has long made a living on writing big fat Fantasy and Science Fiction. I recently got a copy of The Dirty Streets of Heaven and was surprised to find that it rings in at under 500 pages, considerably shorter than Tad’s other recent novels.

Of the novel:

Bobby Dollar has a secret. Actually he’s got a ton of them. The most important one is that his real name’s Doloriel and he’s an angel. Not an important angel, maybe, but a rough-and-tumble guy who’s always done his part in the long cold war between Heaven and Hell.

But now he’s stepped into the middle of something that’s got both sides very nervous — an unprecedented number of missing souls. And if that wasn’t enough, someone has summoned a truly unpleasant Babylonian demon that’s doing its best to track him down and rip him to pieces. Also, his opposite number on the case is arguably the world’s sexiest she-devil, and Bobby has feelings for her that Heaven definitely does not allow.

The Dirty Streets of Heaven is the first book in Tad’s new fantasy-fueled thriller series about an afterlife investigator — the angel Doloriel (Bobby Dollar) — who searches for a missing soul and finds himself caught up in a battle much larger than he imagined.

Three books are planned for the series: The Dirty Streets of Heaven, Happy Hour in Hell, and Sleeping Late on Judgment Day. Each will be somewhat shorter than Tad’s usual epic science fiction and fantasy fare, and although part of a series, each may be read as a stand-alone novel.

Let me just say, “Bobby Dollar” is an egregiously bad name, but I trust in Tad and am eagerly looking forward to reading The Dirty Streets of Heaven. Watch for my review and an interview with Tad Williams later this year.