As time-tested a plot as "the molehunt" is, and the main character being the primary suspect as a matter of course, it creates too strong a promise for following books, drives too deep a wedge in between characters we've only just met. It just doesn't work, in other words. Not as a first book. But I think I've figured out, at least vague ready-to-be-fleshed-in versions for preceding books. It starts with the timeline for this one...
maneuvering the books' timeline
In 1997 in Hong Kong, there was a contracted shift in power over to the People's Republic of China from the British Empire (if, you know, Britain was still an empire in 1997- I've done hours of research on the difference between Great Britain, Normal Britain, England, and the United Kingdom, and I'm still dang confused. England is a part of Britain, and the Queen's actually the queen of Britain not just England,* but that's about as much as I can remember off the top of my head.) I've been using this loosely as the idea of the deadline faced in the molehunt, why they're rushing to get things done, and working it out, I figured, hey, why the heck not, the deadline is midnight, Tuesday, July 1st, 1997-- wasn't there already some stuff planned since the early stages about the rivalry between supernatural-FBI and supernatural-CIA, foreign versus domestic jurisdictions?, so I figure this handover in power in the non-magical world also has some effect on the relationship between nations in the supernatural underworld. Whatever the issue would be. Chinese Dragons? Chinese Warlocks? Fu Manchu? Why not.
From here, the layout of the timeline becomes fairly obvious: the first three books take place over the 90s, sweating with post-Cold War intrigue; proceeding books have more of a higher-tech, war-on-terror slant to them; and the books always take place in the past, always with 20-20 hindsight on political issues and in general avoiding the failed near-future prediction kind of deal that Tom Clancy ran into setting his Cold War-based The Hunt for Red October in, 1992 of all years, if I recall correctly. It's foolproof.
So here's the breakdown:
first trilogy
- Book 1: 1992. The world, both intelligence and non-, supernatural and non-, is still reeling from the collapse of Soviet Union-- but especially the supernatural intelligence community. Maybe it has to do with the rival Illuminati, the Lizard People Illuminati against the Jewluminati (which has apparently been a real word all along, as the spell check seems to love it.) Plot involves Aboriginal Australian concept of "the dreamtime," the period of the creation of the world (which wouldn't be considered a time the way Westerners consider it, as in a sense it could be considered to continue to the present day.) Here, it's depicted as a parallel universe where all myths are true, which if you access you can alter the present by changing the past and the creation of objects, as is what happens in myths-- change the myth, you change reality. Also, Usenet. I'll tell you why later.
- Book 2: 1994 - 1995-ish. Madrid, Spain. Some important historical event that takes place here, maybe? (Research later.) The stuff about the vampires, the strix/strigoi previously discussed. Dreamtime stuff again, or maybe this is all still the plot of book 1...? (Work it out later.) Also I had this idea which I may as well put here, She-Cthulhu engaged in an illicit tentacly relationship with another girl of same species, creating potential political scandal.** It's on tape, and that tape is now adrift on the black market, needing to be recovered before the fan is hit. Which probably explains why they're in Madrid, to recover that? Could use more fleshing-out, but sure. Also: Werewolves! They didn't exist until the foray into dreamtime, and now Agent Moon has to deal with the fallout from that.
- Book 3: 1997. The UK is getting ready to hand off Hong Kong and all that, and there's much to be done trading jurisdictions in the supernatural intelligence community. There's a mole in Tetragrammaton, though, that needs to be flushed out before the handoff occurs, and Agent Moon is the primary suspect. More Illuminati rivalry stuff, which may or may not be illusory. The mole is the Golem team member, but the Golem team member is actually Agent Moon, so he really was the mole! For reasons, eh, we'll work out later as well. End of first trilogy? If what I've got for books 1 and 2 really are for separate books; thinking on it more I don't think they are, (I want the bear-strawberry tree thing to come as a twist, which wouldn't be that effective if he's already mucked around in the dreamtime regarding the creation of werewolves and vampires,) so we'll come up with something for that 5-year gap in between '92 and '97. Maybe something to do with the NOC list...†
second trilogy
- Book 4: 2001. Time for something a little different; Agent Moon doesn't turn up until the end-ish. Or maybe this is about him, but the entire plot is about being cut off from that world; being a sleeper agent deep, deep undercover; so, having the power to be attacked by banshees every couple hours I do not think would be conducive to the plot. It's about a sleeper agent, so deep undercover he's living a normal life entirely cut off from the world of espionage. Maybe it is Finn, and his Agency is keeping the beasties at bay for him. He's been out in the water so long (out of the water so long?) he's beginning to have doubts that he ever really was a magical-type spy to begin with, and is considering getting his head examined. The towers fall, ENRON goes under, and the guy maybe-Finn-maybe-not wonders, if there really were a vast network of spies looking out for me like they said they were, why don't they prevent all the bad crap in the world from going down? Clear religious parallels, the problem of evil, why does God allow bad things happen to good people, type deal. It all turns out to be true by the end, and you betcha the last half of it is gonna be packed chock of action.
- Books 5 - 6: 2004ish - ?. The advanced scrying technology that I dreamed about that one time, a world of total paranoia where anyone could be listening in at any time, and a man is using that technology to kill by not only spying on any place any time in the past present or future, but also being able to go there. Throughout here (and the next book(s)?) there are a couple more deep issues that need to be dealt with: the procurement of the scrying technology and the subsequent adjustment to having total surveillance and not needing boots on the ground; the adjustment needed to technological advancement in general, and what happens to those who are now obsolete; the moral and ethical dilemmae inherent to having (for all intents and purposes) unlimited power; the paradoxes that crop up from time travel needing to be resolved and the problem of free will, of course, like any treatment of time travel needs to examine at least once (maybe this is the assassin's motivation, to prove he's got free will, by going outside of spacetime and thus not being affected by anything yet himself affecting much...) Finn, existing now in multiple iterations, resolves paradoxes by exposing himself to the Face of Smith and becoming eliminated from the timestream completely, but with a backup "him" still existing now in the dreamtime so he comes out okay.
and the adventure continues:
- Subsequent adventures: If this stuff ever gets adapted into a TV show like The Dresden Files was, it's going to take place present day, not be an adaptation of any of the books but rather be a canonical continuation through the medium of television. Radical!
footnote time!
*so it really is just as Tighten says in Megamind!
**Doubtless at least art like this already exists somewhere on the internet (rule 34 of the internet is porn version somewhere always, and rule 63 is gender-swapped version characters somewhere always; the combination is a pretty compelling force) but if it were any good you'd figure you'd have heard of it by now and it would be the 'net's mascot already.
†Necronomicon- usually the word is broken up Necro-Nom-Icon, dead-name-book. Which is a 100% correct description of what the book is, in this universe, although that spelling itself and its subsequent translation may be a tad off from what the official name of the book. The book's name isn't necronomicon, it's necronomnicon- Necron-Omni-Con, death-all-against. Abbreviate it NOC. What the book in reality is, is a collection of the cover identities of all the agents in the field, a book of the names of the dead (sleeping.)
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