We have a lot of great police stories from over the years: 87th Precinct, The Wire, the Bosch series and its related storylines. We usually see the police as, if not heroic, then doing their jobs, even when corruption seeps in.
But then Washington, DC, found itself under federal control. The police department was taken over and National Guard troops brought in. Now we're in questionable times.
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| squadroom, investigators' office |
As the author of two books featuring a squad of detectives in the fictional Monticello, I have detectives, uniforms, and superiors functioning with a sense of mission, despite corruption, tunnel vision from above, and political maneuvering. And some of the heroes are from the wrong side of the law. But the rules in these stories are familiar.
Now we're in uncharted territory. So what do we do? I wish I had answers. Some may choose to confront the uncertainty head on, reflecting reality as it is. Others may lean into earlier eras, something some authors have done to eliminate the technology of the past twenty-five years. Indeed, before she died, Sue Grafton often stated that Kinsey Millhonne would never own a cell phone or send an email, keeping her firmly in the 1980s.
Another suggestion pointed at moving to smaller settings: Small town or rural settings. The trouble is all the tools our characters use normally are in flux. Federal agencies have been altered or dismantled. The situation is so fluid, a writer could start a story with one set of rules and end a first draft with those rules out the window.
Someone coined a curse: May you live in interesting times.
I don't like that guy very much.
It’s an ancient Chinese curse, which unfortunately keeps coming true, more so lately than in the recent past. Crime fiction will survive. Just make your villains politicians.
ReplyDeleteEdward Lodi
Crime fiction will always be with us. As for the fluidity... Think the Bernie Gunther series - for that matter, the long ago SS-GB by Len Deighton. There's always a way. Deep breaths, deep breaths...
ReplyDeleteWe know, we know. You sparked a discussion in our house about the situation in DC, what next, and what if anything will end it. The conversation ended, as usual, with, "Okay, enough about that." As a crime fic person, I'm writing more poetry and reading more fantasy.
ReplyDeleteI like how you framed the uncertainty, it really does feel like the ground rules of crime fiction are shifting under our feet. For me, that makes the genre even more compelling, because writers now have to wrestle with the same chaos their characters do.
ReplyDelete