THE JANUS CHRONICLES

The JANUS Chronicles is just that, an accounting of the unhinged life of private detective Janus Payette. It is a retelling of several cases the detective has been involved with. His story is littered with the broken lives of people he's helped and the bodies of those who've tried to do harm. As a P.I. it is the latest incarnation in a life that has taken him from the dregs to the pinnacle of human survival. In mythology, Janus was the god of gates, doors, doorways, beginnings, and endings, which pretty much spells out his life.

His home is San Francisco and for a time he staked out my little niche in the station near the ATM machines where the light rail system spits out commuters every ten minutes and heat rises up from the tracks in stinking thermals. He belonged to the breed of unwashed homeless scratching out an existence around the city. His name is Janus Payette. J-A-N-U-S. Janus was the god of gates, doors, doorways, beginnings, and endings, which pretty much spells out his life. In a previous life, he was a detective working narcotics, which is about half a notch above being homeless. As a Narc, you don't have many friends and enemies are behind every door and his connection to the God of doors gave him no special license. To make a long sordid story short, some of his enemies wore badges, and when he blew the whistle on a partner taking payoff money from a mob boss the brass sided with his partner, and he was shoved into the gutter. Since then he's been a drunk, a drifter, and the guy on Powell Street holding the sign, "Will Work For Food." It's a pretty good fit. A near-death experience at the hands of muggers turned his life around. It marked a turning point for him and he decided it was more interesting to be alive than dead and he made a promise to himself that he wouldn't be taken advantage of again; pretty heady philosophy for a bent cop scraping the dregs out of life. He was going to take a stance because he was a human being and human beings shouldn't prey on other human beings.

Jerry (J.D.) Blair grew up in the Central Valley of California in a remote dune of oil shale and sand called "Moron". Thankfully the name was changed to Taft before his birth. He attended public schools and in 1958 graduated from Taft Junior College with a degree in communications. His professional career began that same year with an early morning slot at the local radio station KTKR. After a brief stint at San Jose State he escaped the draft by joining the navy. His service completed, in 1965 he began a 30-year career in journalism and television production as a writer and producer at KRON-TV the NBC affiliate in San Francisco. He was nominated twice for writing and producing documentaries. He left KRON in 1981 and was a freelance writer until 1996 when he began writing and producing for the Sacramento Public Television outlet KVIE and eventually became executive producer of the statewide program "California Heartland". He was presented a Chris Award at the Columbus Film Festival in 1998 and was recipient of the Telly Award. He was given a Knight Journalism Fellowship at U.C. Berkeley for media coverage of urban development. He retired from TV journalism in 2000 and began writing fiction. Several stories in his "JANUS" detective series have appeared for e-book publication. Blair will continue to follow Janus into dark and dangerous alleys until one of them is unable to take the pressure. Blair lives in Walnut Creek, California.