Breach of Peace
Lawful Times • Book 1
by Daniel B. Greene, Felix Ortiz
Why You'll Love This
At 98 pages, this grimdark murder investigation hits harder and faster than most doorstoppers twice its size.
- Great if you want: a dark, theocratic detective story with real political teeth
- The experience: tightly wound and grim — reads in a single focused sitting
- The writing: Greene builds atmosphere efficiently, no wasted pages, no hand-holding
- Skip if: you want deep worldbuilding — the brevity leaves things underexplored
About This Book
In a crumbling empire shadowed by religious authority, Inspector Khlid is handed a brutal murder case that should be straightforward — a rebel group, a dead imperial family, a clear enemy. It isn't. What unfolds is a tightly wound investigation where the closer Khlid gets to the truth, the more dangerous the people surrounding her become. This is a story about loyalty under pressure, about what it costs to keep pulling at a thread when everyone else wants it left alone.
At under a hundred pages, Breach of Peace is built for efficiency — no fat, no filler, just a compact mystery that moves with real urgency. Greene and Ortiz lean into the procedural elements with enough gritty world-building to make the setting feel lived-in without demanding pages of exposition. The prose is spare and purposeful, and the pacing rarely lets readers settle into comfort for long. For readers who want their fantasy dark, their politics murky, and their protagonist genuinely under threat, this slim first volume delivers more tension per page than books three times its length.
