What Book to Read?

I recently wrote a post reviewing several British police procedural crime stories, and having enjoyed that, decided to do the same with several American police procedurals. But it was surprisingly difficult to find many to choose from. American crime writing abounds in private detectives, and a whole range of disciplines associated with police work, like forensic psychology or pathology. But there seem to be very few police detective series, at least that I know of.

The first book I’ve chosen is Fiddlers (2005), the last in the classic Ed McBain 87^th Precinct series. McBain, born Salvatore Lombino, changed his name to Evan Hunter, and, starting in 1956, wrote this series as Ed McBain. Like all the books in this series, it has the following epigraph: ‘The city in these pages is imaginary. The people, the places, are all fictitious. Only the police routine is based on established investigatory technique’. The city is, of course, New York, and the 87^th precinct is Manhattan. (NYPD Blue doesn’t count, because it was created for TV, and didn’t to my knowledge appear in print.) The story starts with a dead violinist, and involves fiddling in every sense of the word. Are the police just fiddling round? Can fiddling with someone else’s life get you into trouble? All of the detectives of the precinct contribute something to the solution of the puzzle, primarily through ‘established investigatory technique’, though McBain is happy to accept the importance of ‘the long arm of coincidence’, and there is certainly some of that. You don’t have to have read any other in the series, though familiarity with the characters probably adds something to what is essentially a fairly simple story. The language is a pleasure: theNew York accent leaps off the page.

My next choice is another classic in its way.  Hollywood Station (2007) is by Joseph Wambaugh, who was himself a member of the Los Angeles Police Department for fourteen years. Michael Connelly, whose crime writing I admire, considers Wambaugh ‘invented the modern police novel’. From 1971 to 1983 he wrote a series of books about policing inLos Angeles; this is the first to return to the LAPD since then. His characters clearly resent the changes which were forced upon the department after the Rodney King riots in 1992. King is described as ‘a drunken, drug-addled African American ex-convict’, and the rioters as taking the opportunity to ‘do some looting’. The book is in part a defence of the ‘beleaguered rank and file’. Wambaugh acknowledges ‘the terrific anecdotes and wonderful cop talk’ supplied to him by members of several Californian police departments, and a number of these anecdotes appear in the book. The reader is introduced to police – both patrol cops and detectives – as they deal with a variety of crimes, and with their own personal issues, against the background of a less-than-glamorousHollywood.  The story of two ‘tweakers’ on crystal meth and a jewellery robbery run throughout. Connelly thinks this book ‘sets the standard’. But I found it heavy going, and for once, I’m not really suggesting you read it.

One of Connolly’s own recent books is my third choice. Nine Dragons (2009) is the fifteenth in his series featuring LAPD Detective Harry Bosch. Harry is another in the tradition of maverick loners who clash with authority but solve the case. Earlier in the series he actually resigned from the LAPD and went private for a while, but he returned to the force and at least in the beginning of this story, is prepared to use the department’s established investigatory techniques. But when a seemingly run-of-the-mill case turns personal, things go terribly wrong. Established techniques are of no use, and he has only himself to rely on. Some exciting climaxes and clever twists make the book hard to put down, and critics say it is as good as any of the earlier ones. But I think there is something a bit mechanical and unconvincing about the story, and prefer The Narrows (2004) or A Darkness More than Night (2001).

These are of course not the only American police procedurals, but I am still left wondering why there are so few of them, compared with the array of British series. Is it perhaps the intense American individualism that prefers the private individual to the government employee? Or do the Americans simply not trust their police in the way the British do?  Or is it the ascendancy of the FBI, which appears so often in books about crimes against the State? I’m guessing of course. Anyone else got any ideas? Or American police procedural series they’ve enjoyed?

You can find out more about Evan Hunter here, Joseph Wambaugh here, and Michael Connelly here