Joy,
Re your comment below:
> It's dark because the initial crime is the murder
of
> a 13-year-old drug
> runner and because the police dilemma of the book
is
> to either infiltrate
> the all-powerful drug organizations (the last
such
> infiltrator was killed)
> or to reach a power-sharing arrangement with
them.
Is it your contention that no law enforcement agency would
ever be faced with that dilemma in real life? There are, in
fact, police agencies who SPECIALIZE in infiltrating drug
rings(the DEA, for example), and the NYPD is said to have
come to some sort of accord with the drug rings of NYC prior
to the mayoral administration of Rudy Giuliani. That
certainly doesn't render it a NON-procedural, by
itself.
> The book is too much soap
> opera for me, though, lots of breastbeating
and
> angst and infighting and
> snide comments about everyone else's tacky
taste.
Like the popular police procedural TV drama, HILL ST. BLUES,
you mean? Or are you suggesting that HILL STREET was also a
non-procedural?
> There's no police
> procedure, and neither side seems rational enough
to
> keep a large
> organization running. Not my cup of tea.
Speaking as a cop with more than a decade's experience I can
testify to the absolute truth of a law enforcement agency run
by an irrational mangerial/command staff. Again, I have to
say that this doesn't mean the James books are
non-procedurals.
I haven't read them, and you may very well be right,
but none of the reasons you've given so far are
convincing.
JIM DOHERTY
__________________________________________________ Do You
Yahoo!? HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs http://www.hotjobs.com
-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 11 Aug 2002 EDT