Adventures in Research

 By Kate Flora

Back around the time of the dinosaurs, when I started publishing, I thought that what a writer did was sit at her desk and make things up. Boy was I wrong! Writing for an audience as discerning as the crime reading community means that we have to work hard at getting things right. Get them wrong and you’ll
hear about it. I soon learned to embrace research and the adventures that sometimes accompany it.

It began with wanting to know more about police procedure in Portland, Maine, where I was setting my Detective Sergeant Joe Burgess series. I figured it would be helpful if I had a better sense of the city, and what patrol was like from an officer’s perspective, so I went on a ride along. Before I got in the car, the lieutenant who arranged it said, “Just stay quiet and don’t be annoying. They don’t want you there.” But somehow, as the hours passed, I would say, “What are you seeing that I’m not,” and get very helpful answers. I would learn that, while for us what we might notice or remember about a street might be where people lived or interesting houses or gardens we admired, for them, the streets were a map of crime.

“That’s the house where the dad hanged himself in the basement and the kids found him.”

“That’s the alley where we chased the guy who’d just killed his girlfriend.”

“You see that guy over there? We’ll be arresting him before the evening is done.”

All of the lore they shared gave me greater insight into my characters and the city they served. At the end of the first ride along, I went to the lab where they tried to shock me by showing horrible crime scene photos.

Back when I dreamed of being a writer, I certainly didn’t envision being sent out to hide in the woods so dogs being trained for search and rescue could find me. Taking that one step further, I never imagined that moment when, having asked my go-to person with the Miramichi, New Brunswick police if I could see where the victim’s body was found, he would back two four-wheelers out of a garage, hand me a helmet, and say, “Let’s go.”

Then there are the classes. In order to write my tough female character, Thea Kozak, in that long-running series, I took a RAD self-defense class at my local police department. It’s hard to adequately describe walking across the gym knowing that any minute, the guy in the suit was going to attack me from behind. I’m a writer, so I save all of those feelings and lessons to use in my books.

Since my own department doesn’t offer one, I took a Citizens Police Academy in a neighboring town. So much great information and the instructors were amazing. For our last class, we got to be the cops and the cops were the bad guys. So when I rolled up in my pretend police car and tried to get the person I’d “stopped” to give me his information, humiliation began even before I got out of the car. I opened the car door, swung sideways, caught my holster on the door handle and banged my nose on the window. Then the cop playing the bad guy refused to give me his ID and said to the passenger, “Isn’t she cute?” So glad I didn’t have to be a real rookie.

 Learning the deeper stuff we need to know to write realistic characters sometimes comes as a surprise gift. When I was at the Writer’s Police Academy, I went on a ride along in Greenville, North Carolina. We were on the fringes of the city, missing the domestics and knife fight writers on other ride alongs got to see. But at one point, on a rural road, we passed a guy out walking where there was no one around. After the cop had checked on the man, and we’d driven off, I asked why he’d stopped. Since things were quiet, he pulled into a parking lot and stopped. He told me the story of another time when he’d stopped someone late at night on a lonely road. That time the guy was armed, wanted on a federal warrant, and was on his way to rob a gas station. Then he showed the video of the event. Afterward, he told me how the department had handled it, about the phone call he’d made to his pregnant wife, and I got to speak with his supervisor about all that goes into handling a situation like that, including the emotional aftermath.

 It was such a gift, and again, gave me great insight into what it’s like to be an officer in a tense situation. Going to the shooting range. Cadaver dog training. I could write on and on about such adventures. But this post would get too long. What I will say is how I’m always amazed and grateful for the generosity of people who answer my questions and share their knowledge and make me a better writer of fictional and actual cops.

 Kate Flora’s fascination with the darker side of human nature began in the Maine attorney general’s office, where she encountered everything from deadbeat dads to child abusers to discriminatory employers. This exposure ignited her curiosity about what drives people to cross moral and legal lines. The author of twenty-eight books including crime fiction, thrillers, true crime, memoir, and nonfiction, Flora’s been a finalist for awards including the Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, Silver Falchion, and Derringer. She has twice won the Maine Literary Award for crime fiction, taken home the Public Safety Writers Association award for nonfiction, and received lifetime achievement honors from both the New England Crime Bake and the Maine Crime Wave. Her website is: https://www.kateclarkflora.com She blogs with the Maine Crime Writers. https://mainecrimewriters.com