Please, tell me all about your day…

September 5th, 2009

LA Confidential

At a recent conference I attended a session given by a senior police superintendent. The idea was he would talk about police procedure for writers. He had my attention from the moment he opened his mouth, and not for the reason we were there, but because he had the most deliciously black gallows humour. He spoke of terrible scenarios in a way you could only find in nurses or futures traders - those who face sudden death every day.

This police supremo replied to a question about writers accessing information on procedure with the answer, ‘You don’t. Unless you get to know a policemen.’ At this point I felt a certain smugness, as I knew a policeman – and a homicide detective, no less. His boy and mine played soccer, and there is nothing like a windswept soccer field in the early morning to foster friendships.

He’s a hard looking dude - makes you want to confess straight up or offer your DNA on spec. But he has been very kind in answering my pesky and endless question about police procedure. In fact I’m surprised he hasn’t put a block on my emails. I am very aware of the irritation factor I could present, so I don’t harass too much. But I need to know. I watch very little TV now, but years ago used to watch The Bill, and I’m pretty sure Australian cops don’t go around saying, ‘you’re nicked, sunshine.’

Other soccer friendships include a chemistry forensics professor, an international law specialist and an academic nuclear physicist. I have picked their bulging brains until raw and will certainly be acknowledging them when the book is published, as well as offering a more fermented grape kind of acknowledgement.

Invariably, these experts shred my imagined scenes or plots with precision and leave them lying in a heap, and I have to keep re working and re thinking. For example - I want my character to be in a long coma but revive unharmed, and I want to put him in that coma with opium. No can do, comes the advice. You can have your coma, but not without brain damage and the opium won’t be detected as opium, and so it goes on as I run scenario’s by them, until one day, it all fits.

But the big test will come when I want to research a character or scene and I don’t know anyone in the field. I like to think that with the right approach people are happy to share the facts about their occupations. I have favourite café near the law courts where the barristers come to drink the excellent coffee. Some of them sweep in, briefs under the arm, hair swept back, as if the café is their courtroom and we are their jurors. They order and talk loudly and are generally very pleased with themselves. I sit like a small, alert parasite in the corner jotting down every move, every nuance. But would I approach one?

Yes, I think I would if I needed to. Because I know these guys would love it.