Joy,
Re your comments on why Bill James's books are not
procedurals.
> Well, the protagonists are high-ranking police,
but
> there isn't any police
> work in it. Mostly, the three top cops try
to
> undermine each other or
> prevent one from physically attacking a second
or
> sleep with the another
> one's wife.
That's the way real-life cops in a mangerial/command position
often act. And since big-city command-type cops do very
little hands-on police work, you wouldn't see a lot of beat
patrolling or street level investigating if the story was
told from their POV. That doesn't, by itself, render it a
non-procedural. The accuracy or inaccuracy of the law
enforcement milieu is what renders it a procedural or a
non-procedural.
> Much of the book is from the top
> criminals' perspective, and
> they have similar dysfunctional
relationships.
Many procedurals spend large sections from the criminals'
POV. Off-hand, McBain's THE HECKLER (my personal favorite
87th Precinct) comes to mind. Much of the book is told from
the POV of the criminal mastermind, referred to only as "the
deaf man." This character proved to be so compelling that
McBain has made him the 87th's personal Moriarty, bringing
him back for FUZZ, LET'S HEAR IT FOR THE DEAF MAN, EIGHT
BLACK HORSES, and MISCHIEF, in the process capitalizing his
title into a proper name, "The Deaf Man."
Similarly, many of Maurice Procter's Harry Martineau books
are told from the POV of Dixie Costello, the city of
Granchester's number one organized crime figure, to whose
incarceration Martineau devotes much of the series.
JIM DOHERTY
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