Not too long ago, I read a detective story where the hero needed to
bluff his way past security guards, hide under a desk, etc. It got me
thinking. How do you get your hero past the guards? Arrange for all
the buildings to have air ducts big enough to crawl around in?
I was trying to think of a detective who had a
special talent for such things, and came up with an idea for a character
named Nick Perkele. Nick lost his edge when his girlfriend was killed
by a mob boss. One night Nick got drunk on a special a bottle of
Finnish Vodka. After drinking it is possessed
by a demon named Piru (previously trapped in the bottle by a curse).
The demon is the real protagonist. He sees his kind as misunderstood. The
demons could have made a better world than the Big Guy, but since they
were thrown out of Heaven they have to think smaller. Piru plans to
fix Nick’s life by taking down the mobsters that killed his girlfriend
and jump-starting his career. The demon can switch bodies through
contact, and this allows him to infiltrate almost any building. He can
simply possess the security guards.
The problem is that the mobster
who put the hit on Nick’s girlfriend is into the occult, and he
employs a Finnish shaman who can send Piru to Tuonela–a place where
he can do nothing but sleep for all eternity.