Jordan,
Re your question below:
"I am really big fan of Ed McBain's 87th Precinct novels, so
I sought out other police procedurals. I went to
http://www.answers.
com/topic/ police-procedural
and it had a British and an American top 10 list. . . Any
other ideas?"
Back in September 2002, the monthly topic was police
procedurals. At that time I offered a list of my top ten
police procedural authors and wrote the following about
them:
DALLAS BARNES: Who I mentioned some time ago in a post
called
"Angeleno Cop-Writers." Not as ambitious as Joseph Wambaugh
(on whose coat-tails he was sailing), but, on that account,
more successfulfor me. His novels about LAPD's Southwest
Divisional Station, where he served as a detective for
several years, could have become the West Coast version of
the 87th Precinct had ne not been seduced by
television.
JOHN CREASEY (J.J. MARRIC): Creator of two classic Scotland
Yard-based series cops, Roger West under his own name, and
George Gideon as Marric. His own favorite among his hundreds
of books was a later West entry, LOOK THREE WAYS AT
MURDER.
TONY HILLERMAN: Wonderful writing, wonderful settings,
wonderful characters, wonderful research, wonderful plotting,
wonderful story-telling ability. 'Nuff said.
ED McBAIN: Creator of the 87th Precinct, except for DRAGNET,
the most famous example of the police procedural sub-genre.
Unlike many long-running series, McBain's kept an amazingly
high, amazingly even quality over the years, though I confess
I like the early entries best.
GERALD PETIEVITCH: My favorite Fed. His lean, mean,
stripped-down prose style, and ultra-profesional cop
characters make him the Hammett of procedural writers.
MAURICE PROCTER: Unjustly forgotten, this North Englan copper
was the real deal, an honest-to-God career bobby (as opposed
to a senior civil servant put in charge of a police force at
some point in his career) whose characters were realistic
working-class law enforcement professionals.
MAJ SJOWALL and PER WAHLOO: Unrepentant Marxists they may
have been, but they sure could write, and the Beck novels are
among the finest cop novels ever published.
DOROTHY UHNAK: Tough but compassionate, much like her
characters. As I said earlier this month, not nearly enough
credit goes to her for starting the trend of cops writing
novels AND the trend of women authors creating tough,
professional, female detectives.
JOHN WAINWRIGHT: Another North England cop who put his
experience into his novels. He doesn't belt it out of the
park every time he steps up to bat, but when he's on his
game, there's no one better.
THOMAS WALSH: The last of "Cap" Shaw's original "Black Mask
Boys" to still be actively writing (his "Best Man" is the
only genuine procedural in Shaw's HARD-BOILED OMNIBUS, and
his "Chance After Chance" won him his second Edgar in the
'80s), former police reporter Walsh managed better than just
about any other writer to capture the Irish-American culture
of Depression-era and post-war New York cops. Out of nearly a
dozen novels only four were about cops, but 80 to 90 per cent
of his hundreds of short stories, in pulps, slicks, and
digests were procedurals.
I also listed the following ten books as my top ten police
procedural novels, listig them in chronological order:
NIGHTMARE IN MANHATTAN by Thomas Walsh SIGNAL 32 by McKinlay
Kantor LAST SEEN WEARING . . . by Hillary Waugh GIDEON'S WEEK
by J.J. Marric THE HECKLER by Ed McBain THE BAIT by Dorothy
Uhnak THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo
LISTENING WOMAN by Tony Hillerman ALL ON A SUMMER'S DAY by
John Wainwright THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS by Thomas
Harris
As for Wambaugh, you asked how THE CHOIR BOYS compares to THE
ONION FIELD. The first is a novel, the second is non-fiction,
so it's not really fair to compare them.
THE CHOIR BOYS is kind of to the police procedural what
M*A*S*H is to military fiction, a black, and even tragic
comedy, much as that might seem an oxymoron.
Hope that helps.
JIM DOHERTY
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