Research by Dana King

Research is typically either an author’s favorite pursuit or a tedious burden. Sometimes both. Among the problems are the eternal, unanswerable questions: how much needs to go into the book, and how to get it in.

 

I think of two separate levels of research when I’m putting together a Penns River police procedural novel, of which White Out is the most recent. (July 11 from Down & Out Books.)

 

The higher level includes the actual police procedure, and how cops think and react. This I enjoy, because it gives me an excuse to do things I’d do anyway. I love to read cops’ memoirs, or books intended to enlighten laymen on how police do things. Either of Adam Plantinga’s books, or anything by Connie Fletcher comes to mind. Edward Conlon’s Blue Blood, Del Quentin Wilbur’s A Good Month for Murder, and David Simon’s classic Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets get periodic re-reads. True, the books become more dated every day, but the core principles of police work and how cops think don’t change all that much.

 

Fiction plays a role, too. Anything by Ed McBain or Joseph Wambaugh will provide insight into both procedure and personality. Mark Bergin’s Apprehension, Frank Zafiro’s River City books, Colin Conway’s 509 series, and Bruce Coffin’s Detective Byron mysteries all give accurate and informative accounts of life as a police officer. In visual media, The Wire, Bosch, and NYPD Blue are treasure troves. As above, these become more dated all the time (especially the TV shows, some of which are already twenty-plus years old), but the core truth of, to use Wambaugh’s famous phrase, “how the cases work on the cops,” doesn’t change much. The secret when using fiction as research is to use fiction that gets things right. Shows like CSI and NCIS do not fall into this category.

 

How best to use all this information? Between the lines as much as possible. The purpose of high-level research is to inform the author more than the reader. The deeper your background knowledge is, the more authoritative your writing will be, and that’s critical if you’re writing procedurals and are not yourself a cop. I am constantly looking for little things I can drop in that will lend an aura of expertise to a scene. The intent is to write lines the average reader might not notice but will cause a knowledgeable person to nod their head and think “He gets it.” Not only will it improve your credibility with professionals, readers pick up on it subconsciously.

 

The closer research is more specific. This is when I take time to look up specific things to ensure I got them right, or to be as fair as possible. The basic story of White Out is what happens after a Black patrol officer shoots and kills a white man, which provokes a white supremacist rally for the funeral. I spend as little time as possible (read: none) dealing with white supremacists, so I needed to do some research into the organizations, their structure, and some of their talking points. (The Southern Poverty Law Center is an excellent source for such information.)

 

The organizer of the rally makes several incendiary remarks during the book. I don’t speak fluent racist, so research was in order. I also stepped back a couple of times to make sure I hadn’t put words in his mouth that might lead someone to paint my depiction as unfair, thus tarnishing everything else I said. That required looking up actual statements to make sure I’d not crossed a line. (For what it’s worth, I only ever scratched the surface. There’s no bottom to these guys.)

 

Research can become a rationalization to procrastinate, so be careful with the reasons for doing it. That’s why I prefer most of mine to be of the the overarching, more general research that can be done any time, often as part of my recreational reading. (No writer’s reading is purely recreational.) Then I drill down as much as necessary to make this book work. Sometimes that’s a lot. Sometimes very little. The key thing to remember is that the research must serve the story and not the other way around.

 

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Dana King writes the Penns River series of police procedurals, the newest of which is White Out. He has also earned two Shamus Award nominations for his Nick Forte private investigator novels. His work has appeared in outlets such as Thuglit and Mystery Tribune and numerous anthologies, most recently The Eviction of Hope. You can get to know him better on his website (https://danakingauthor.com/), blog (https://danaking.blogspot.com/), Facebook page ( DanaKingBooks), or Twitter (@DanaKingAuthor).