Mat,
Re your comment below:
> For my own purposes, I always class this kind
of
> book as a "Detective
> Inspector Novel". I feel that police
procedurals,
> strictly, are ensemble
> stories, and that they should have a kind
of
> detached flatness or objectivity
> to them - the actual activities of the cops, in
a
> largely unglamourised
> manner, should be central to every scene,
and
> pre-eminent in the book as a
> whole.
A police procedural is nothing more or less than a crime
story in which the accurate depiction of police work is the
central element. Here's what it is NOT:
It's not necessarily an ensemble. What if the department
being depicted is a one-man department. There are over three
hundred one-officer departments in the US. An officer working
in a department for which s/he is the full complement of
manpower CAN'T be part of an ensemble because he's all there
is. Further, defining a procedural as an ensemble
automatically rules out any book featuring a first-person
protagonist. If the raison d'etre of a police procedural is
accuracy in the depiction of law enforcement, and that's how
Boucher defined it when he coined the term, than to say it
MUST have an ensemble cast means that any book accurately
depicting rural law enforcement, which is often performed
alone, and, as I said, in the case of more than 300 US police
agencies is ALWAYS performed alone, isn't actually a
procedural, that the procedural is always urban, which is
silly.
While such a protagonist may be part of a team, the other
members of the team are necessarily supporting actors in the
plot rather than co-equal ensemble members. If you rule out
first-person narrators (as you must if procedurals are
defined as only being ensembles) then you rule out the
definitive procedural, DRAGNET; you rule out Jonathan Craig;
you rule out Collin Wilcox; and, it just so happens, you rule
out me.
As for law enforcement being pre-eminent to every scene in
the book, what about Steve Carella's home life in the 87th
Precinct books, or George Gideon's in the Gideon books? What
about Joe Friday's various girl friends in DRAGNET? What
about scenes in which the criminal takes center stage so we
can get a reminder of what the heroes are fighting against.
Are the 87th Precinct novels involving The Deaf Man
non-procedurals because a good protion of those books are
spent wathcing the villain plan his caper? Are the scenes
depicting OC figure Dixie Costello in Maurice Procter's Harry
Martineau books non-procedurals for taking the focus away
from Martineau and his squad for parts of the book? Surely
not.
If the police work is a central element of the book, and it's
presented accurately (or at least purports to be depicted
accurately) it's a procedural, pure, plain, and simple.
JIM DOHERTY
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