Pay Attention
There is no higher compliment to my writing than when I am mistaken for law enforcement. Nothing makes my day more than someone—especially a cop—who tells me I nailed something on the procedural side. The evening after Bouchercon panel moderator and long-time Florida LEO Jim Born made a point to tell the audience to take seriously an answer of mine, British cop-turned-author Colin Campbell turned to me at the bar and said, “You were police, right?”
Nope.
Never attended a police academy, not even a writer’s police academy. Never did a ride-along. So how do I get things right enough that people who know will compliment me on it?
I pay attention.
I think it was Woody Allen who once said 80% of success is showing up; I say the rest is paying attention. I do very little specific research for my writing, but I have over the years read a lot of cop memoirs and “day in the life” books. I revisit all of Connie Fletcher’s books every few years; same with David Simon’s Homicide. Adam Plantinga’s books are a more current passion. What I’m looking for is how cops think and how they react. How they talk. What they put on and what’s real. What’s important to them. How cases most often get solved. (It’s generally not through high-tech CSI work.)
I take a few notes, but not a lot. It’s more of an immersive experience. I’ll dog-ear a page or write something in a margin or add a Post-it flag. I may set the book aside for a minute and think on what I just read. I pay attention. It doesn’t matter that I won’t remember where I got something, only that it stuck.
Once a year or so I go on minor binges of Investigation Discovery’s Homicide Hunter. (The main murder in my upcoming novel, Ten-Seven, is based on one of these cases.) Joe Kenda had a closure rate over 90% during his time as a Colorado Springs cop and his manner of describing his methods is matter-of-fact while giving insights into how he handled the case and how it might have affected him. I just bought his book. I’ll absorb it when everything else in my life makes the time seem right.
Carefully selected fiction is another good resource; the key here is “carefully selected.” Getting your investigative tips from CSI or NCIS or Criminal Minds is the way to go if you want to contribute to the problem. To aid in the solution you need to find fiction that itself gets things right because it kills two birds with one stone: it teaches you how things work and provides examples of how to tell about it in an entertaining manner.
How can you tell who gets it right? Pay attention. Who do people who know recommend? I mentioned David Simon above. He was also the driving force behind two brilliant television shows: Homicide, and The Wire, which is maybe the greatest TV show ever. Check with cops. Those shows got it right.
There are others—Michael Connelly with his police reporter background comes immediately to mind—but the Buddha of Writers Who Get Cop Stuff Right, the pinnacle of the profession, is Joe Wambaugh. No one has ever combined a talent for police work and a gift for writing more successfully than Wambaugh, and by “success” I don’t just mean sales. I mean writing compelling stories about cops and crime and the effect crime has on everyone, including the cops. It was Wambaugh who said a good procedural is less about how the cops worked on the case than about how the case worked on the cops. Words worth paying attention to.
Everything you need to know is out there waiting for you to come across it. And you likely do, every day. There’s catch, though: You’ll miss it if you don’t pay attention.
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