Hi Charlie,
I don't know if there is a
contortionist's gimmick that would enable someone to move the
police procedural from following the cops to following the
criminal, but I believe that effective procedurals show the
readers who cops are as people, and, at times, what the cop
world is like to live in (Ed McBain, Dell Shannon, Dorothy
Uhnak etc. all do this.). The further the writer gets from
the police, the harder it would be to both detail the
solution of the crime and to reveal the persona of the
police.
Joe Lansdale, John Gregory Dunne,
Elmore Leonard and many others have mixed elements of the
police procedural into novels with multiple viewpoints, but
for a straight, no chaser procedural I can't see the value in
riding shotgun with anyone but the cops, as either a writer
or a reader.
Jim
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