Police procedural
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The police procedural is a sub-genre of the mystery story which attempts to accurately depict the activities of a police force as they investigate crimes.
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Characteristics
It can be difficult to distinguish between the police procedural and other forms of detective fiction, and many works blur boundaries between genres. The principal distinction is that the police procedural details the activities of a group of police officers, as opposed to concentrating on the activities of a single (often amateur) detective or private eye. Another distinction is that the police procedural frequently attempts to depict the work of police officers in solving multiple crimes simultaneously, whereas the detective novel concentrates on one crime. Police procedurals are more likely than other types of crime fiction to have a perpetrator's identity to be known to the reader from the outset, as opposed to the whodunit convention of having the criminal's identity concealed until the climax.
In a police procedural, the principal crimes are generally solved by the story's end, although minor crimes may remain unsolved. One nearly-universal distinction is that the procedural shows us the personal lives of the investigative team, whereas the detective novel does not. Police-related topics such as forensics, autopsies, the gathering of evidence, the use of search warrants and interrogation of suspects feature strongly compared other types of detective fiction. For example, the protagonists in a police procedural may witness an autopsy in person, whilst in a traditional whodunit, the autopsy will only be alluded to. Some examples of police procedurals have pathologists or forensic experts as the main characters, with actual police officers playing only a minor role.
History
There were earlier precedents, but Lawrence Treat's 1945 novel V for Victim has been cited as perhaps the first "true" police procedural [1], [2]. Another early example is Hillary Waugh's Last Seen Wearing ....
It has been suggested that the radio drama Dragnet was "The most famous procedural of all time ... Actor/producer Jack Webb's catchphrase, 'Just the facts, ma'am,' has become a permanent part of the culture."[3] Webb also authored a non-fiction police procedural of the Los Angeles Police Department called "The Badge" in 1958 (reprinted by Thunder's Mouth Press, New York, 2005). In it he describes the procedures of the LAPD as it attempts to professionalize itself and its image into that of a scientific bureacracy in which crimes are solved by the work of many policemen and not by the genius of one mind, as detective fiction liked to suggest.
Written stories
Ed McBain
Perhaps the best example of the police procedural is the work of Ed McBain, the pseudonym of Evan Hunter. Starting in 1956, he wrote dozens of novels in the 87th Precinct series. Hunter continued to write 87th Precinct novels almost until his death in 2005. Although these novels focus primarily on Detective [Steve Carella, they encompass the work of many officers working alone and in teams, and Carella is not always present in any individual book. Hunter has used many different narrative approaches over the years, and the 87th Precinct novels are often works of great power, depth, and emotional richness, and often contain moments of terrific (if sometimes gruesome) humour.
Dell Shannon
A prolific author of police procedurals, whose work has fallen out of fashion in the years since her death, is Elizabeth Linington writing as "Dell Shannon". Ms. Linington, who wrote under her own name as well as a number of pseudonyms, reserved her Dell Shannon pseudonym primarily for procedurals featuring Detective Luis Mendoza (1960-1986). These novels are often considered severely flawed due to the author's far-right political viewpoint (she was a proud member of the John Birch Society), which occasionally works its way into the novels in the form of racism, sexism and extreme homophobia. However, they have a certain naive charm in their depiction of a kinder, gentler California, where the police were always "good guys" who solved all the crimes and respected the citizenry.
Georges Simenon
It is hard to say whether the Inspector Maigret novels of Georges Simenon represent procedurals because of their strong focus on the Inspector himself, but the cast of supporting characters frequently includes repeating members of his staff and some would argue that they qualify. Similarly, some critics suggest that the comic strip, Dick Tracy, is actually an early procedural, but this seems unlikely due to the strong focus on the protagonist.
J. D. Robb
Popular novelist Nora Roberts writes gritty, dark futuristic police procedurals under this pseudonym. The ...In Death series stars a tortured heroine in detective Eve Dallas.
Detective novel writers
It is difficult to disentangle the early roots of the procedural from its more common cousin, the detective novel, which features a police officer as protagonist. By and large, the better known novelists such as Ngaio Marsh produced work that falls more squarely into the province of the detective novel. Nevertheless, some of the work of authors less well known today, like Freeman Wills Crofts' novels about Inspector French or some of the work of the prolific team of G.D.H. and Margaret Cole, might be considered as the antecedents of today's police procedural.
Significant radio and TV series
Prominent American police procedurals broadcast on radio / television include:
- Dragnet was a pioneering police procedural. Beginning on radio in 1949 and on television in 1952, Dragnet established the tone of many police dramas in subsequent decades, presenting an (at times) somewhat idealized portrait of the relationship between the police department and the crimes investigated (the police department were invariably presented as 'good guys', the criminals as 'bad guys', with little moral flexibility or complexity between the two.
- Law & Order, a long-running series (1990 - present) focusing on the two 'halves' of a criminal proceeding in the New York City criminal justice system: the investigation of the crime by the police detectives and the subsequent prosecution of the criminals by the district attorney's office. The success of the original Law & Order inspired four other spin-off series; Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999), Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2001), Law & Order: Trial by Jury (2005) and Conviction (2006); the first two are more heavily police procedurals than the latter two. As well as being a police procedural (focusing primarily on the criminal investigations as opposed to the characters personal lives - although, unlike Dragnet, presenting a more complex picture of the police department, with many cases involving police corruption), this program also relates to the courtroom drama and 'forensic pathology' subgenres, inspiring such other programs as the CSI series.
- Homicide: Life on the Street (1991-1998), a police procedural focusing on the homicide unit of the Baltimore city police department. Critically praised (although frequently struggling in the ratings), the show was more of an ensemble piece, focusing on the activities of the unit as a whole (although significant characters such as Detective Frank Pembleton and Detective John Munch became popular with viewers).
Prominent British procedurals include:
- The Prime Suspect series, featuring Helen Mirren as DCI (later Superintendent) Jane Tennison, which focussed both on the police investigations and on Tennison's conflicts with her fellow officers as a prominent female detective in a heavily male-dominated work environment.
- The Bill, a drama series focusing on both the uniformed and plain-clothes police officers working out of an inner-city London police station. The original conception of this series was as purely procedural, with an almost fly-on-the-wall approach that survives to a greater or lesser extent to this day.
Comic books
The rise of the police procedural in comic books can partly be attributed to the success of Kurt Busiek's groundbreaking 1994 series Marvels, and his subsequent Astro City work, both of which examine the typical superhero universe from the viewpoint of the common man who witnesses the great dramas from afar, participating in them tangentially at best.
In the wake of Busiek's success, many other writers mimicked his approach, with mixed results – the narrative possibilities of someone who does not get involved in drama are limited. In 2000, however, Image Comics published the first issue of Brian Michael Bendis's comic Powers, which followed the lives of homicide detectives as they investigated superhero-related cases. Bendis's success has led both Marvel Comics and DC Comics to begin their own superhero-themed police procedurals (District X and Gotham Central, respectively), which focus on how the job of a police officer is affected by such tropes as secret identities, superhuman abilities, costumes, and the near-constant presence of vigilantes.
The future
Over the years and into the 21st century, the police procedural has grown and mutated to meet the changing tastes of readers and viewers. In its earliest years, the police were sterling and honourable; lately, the stories have been enlivened by the addition of concepts of moral doubt, and the corruptibility of one or another officer.
Additionally, modern detection methods now provide a considerably wider field for today's novelist or screenwriter to depict interesting and little-known day-to-day activities of the police. It seems reasonable to assume that the police procedural, as a form, will continue to rise and fall in popularity, but never disappear entirely.
The top ten police procedurals
according to the Crime Writers' Association (1990):
- Hillary Waugh: Last Seen Wearing ... (1952)
- Ed McBain: Cop Hater (1956)
- Colin Dexter: The Dead of Jericho (1981)
- Reginald Hill: Underworld (1988)
- Reginald Hill: Dead Heads (1983)
- Martin Cruz Smith: Gorky Park (1981)
- J. J. Marric: Gideon's Day (1955)
- Ed McBain: Sadie When She Died (1972)
- H. R. F. Keating: The Murder of the Maharajah (1980)
- Joseph Wambaugh: The Onion Field (1975)
according to the Mystery Writers of America (1995):
- Tony Hillerman: Dance Hall of the Dead (1973)
- Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö: The Laughing Policeman (1968)
- Martin Cruz Smith: Gorky Park (1981)
- Tony Hillerman: A Thief of Time (1988)
- Lawrence Sanders: The First Deadly Sin (1973)
- Hillary Waugh: Last Seen Wearing ... (1952)
- James McClure: The Steam Pig (1971)
- Joseph Wambaugh: The Choirboys (1975)
- P. D. James: Shroud for a Nightingale (1971)
- Ed McBain: Ice (1983) and John Ball: In the Heat of the Night (1965) (tie)
Source
- The Hatchards Crime Companion. 100 Top Crime Novels Selected by the Crime Writers' Association, ed. Susan Moody (London, 1990).
- The Crown Crime Companion. The Top 100 Mystery Novels of All Time Selected by the Mystery Writers of America, annotated by Otto Penzler and compiled by Mickey Friedman (New York, 1995).