The Bay Area is not quite as rich a source for cops who write
cop fiction as LA, but there've been a few.
JERRY KENNEALLY Jerry, a Bay Area PI, is (not surprisingly)
best-known as a PI novelist, particularly for his books about
Nick Polo. But like so most fictional PIs (and quite a few
real-life ones for that matter), Jerry started out as a cop.
Specifically as a member of the San Francisco PD. While not
abandoning Polo, he's been putting that official law
enforcement experience to use in two recent novels featuring
Inspector Jack Kordic of SFPD Homicide, THE CONDUCTOR and THE
HUNTED, both of which have a number of "international
thriller" elements added to the usual police procedural
ingredients. To the best of my knowledge, Jerry's the only
SFPD veteran to write novels about the SFPD.
JOSEPH D. McNAMARA Possibly the highest-ranking cop to write
cop novels, McNamara started out as a uniformed police
officer in the NYPD. Rising to the rank of deputy inspector
(one grade above captain in NYPD's hierarchy) while still in
his 30s, he left the Apple to accept a job as head of the
force in Kansas City, MO, becoming the youngest major city
police chief in the country. From there he went took over the
police department in San Jose, CA, at the southern tip of the
Bay Area. He's written four very good cop novels. The first
three, THE FIRST DIRECTIVE, FATAL COMMAND, and THE BLUE
MIRAGE, feature Finnbar Fraleigh. In the first book
Fraleigh's a detective sergeant in the police force of an
unnamed big city in the south Bay Area, located somewhere
between Silicon Valley and Santa Cruz (which is to say, the
police force of San Jose). In the second, he transfers to the
newly-formed police force of Silicon City, which is a
fictional city in a real place. McNamara imagines what might
happen if every city in Santa Clara County, north of the San
Mateo County line and south of San Jose, plus all the
unincorporated area in between, merged into one municipality.
In FATAL COMMAND, Fraleigh's the Chief of Detectives. In the
BLUE MIRAGE, he's the acting police chief. Talk about
meteoric rises! His fourth book, CODE 211 BLUE, is a
stand-alone set in The City, and featuring an SFPD inspector
in the lead.
DAVID SCANNELL Another former San Jose cop (though a grunt
rather than a boss), Scannell's only novel, THE HOOD, is
about the search, by a San Jose (the city is specifically
named; not hinted at) police sergeant, for a serial
rapist.
ROBIN BURCELL is an officer in the police force of Lodi, CA.
Strictly speaking, since Lodi is located in San Joaquin
County, which is not one of the nine Bay Area counties,
Robin's not a Bay Area cop, and her first book, WHEN MIDNIGHT
COMES (a combination romance/police procedural/time travel
adventure), is set in modern-day Miami and Regency-era
England. Her second, however, the award-winning EVERY MOVE
SHE MAKES, is set in The City, and features SFPD's first
female homicide inspector as the main character. Right after
the book was accepted by the publisher, Robin proved
prescient when SFPD, for the first time, assigned a woman
inspector to its homicide detail.
STAN WASHBURN is one of the most highly-respected artists in
the country. In addition to his "day" job of producing
paintings and lithographs, he spent some ten years as a
reserve officer in the Berkeley PD. He's written two novels,
INTENT TO HARM (based loosely on the famous "Stinky" serial
rape case) and INTO THIN AIR, and one short story, "Beat
Routine" (which appeared in a Scott Turow-edited anthology of
legal mysteries the title of which escapes me just now),
featuring Officer Toby Parkman of the police department of a
Bay Area college town Stan chooses to call "Bancroft," but
which any Bay Area resident will recognize as Berkeley.
ME For the sake of completeness, I'll mention that I also
started my law enforcement career in Berkeley, first as a
civilian employee of the campus police, then as an officer in
the city police, and that two of my published short stories
(and all too many of my unpublished ones) have been set
there.
JIM DOHERTY
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