ENGLISH 383: Women Mystery Writers

Police Procedural Fiction



  1. Emerging in the 1940s and 50s it sought to present to the reader a realistic portrayal of police methods.

  2. Among the most rigidly formulaic of genres of detective fiction, though in the late 1980s and 90s, its conventions are challenged, subverted, and altered

  3. It provides extensive details of police routine and investigation techniques in the solving of the crime – frequently the crime itself is secondary to the details of the crime and the techniques employed by the police to solve the crime

  4. The crime, and the investigation of it, often pushes the larger questions of justice, human psychology, and social order to second or even third place in relation to the details of daily life in a police station or to the scientific and/or police techniques employed in solving the crime

  5. It usually presents the novel from the point of view of the police detective, though more recent police procedurals employ detectives who are public servants, but not necessarily police officers (Kay Scarpetta in Patricia Cornwell’s novels, for instance, is a chief medical examiner)

  6. The central detective (or team of detectives) are often working on more than one case at a time; sometimes the cases converge so that one criminal is hunted, but more often, the multiple cases are used to add a "real life" quality to the novel

  7. The personal life of the detective (or team of detectives) often occupies a prominent place in the novel, sometimes intersecting with the criminal’s life or with the crime, but more often it is there to establish the detective’s personal interest in the crimes she/he solves

  8. The most prominent early American practitioner of this kind of fiction was Ed McBain whose 87th Precinct novels focused on life in a big city police force. In Britain, John Creasy created the character of Inspector Roger West of Scotland Yard who appeared in 40 novels beginning with Inspector West at Home (1944)

Brief Biography of PD James