Dana King has been a finalist twice for the Private Eye Writers of America Shamus Award for A Small Sacrifice (2013) and again two years later for The Man in the Window. His novel Grind Joint was noted by Woody Haut in the L.A. Review of Books as one of the fifteen best noir reads of 2013. A short story, “Green Gables,” appeared in the anthology Blood, Guts, and Whiskey, edited by Todd Robinson. Other short fiction has appeared in Thuglit, Spinetingler, New Mystery Reader, A Twist of Noir, Mysterical-E, and Powder Burn Flash.
In Dana's new novel, Resurrection Mall, just released yesterday, development and funding of a new religious-themed mall in Penns River grinds to a halt when heavily armed assassins cut down five leaders of the town’s fledgling drug trade while eating lunch in the food court. The television minister behind the mall has associates not normally associated with a ministry, outside drug gangs may be muscling into town, and the local mob boss could have an angle of his own. The cops have this and all the usual local activity to contend with in a story that extends beyond the borders of Penns River.
Dana stopped by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R on how he went about researching and writing the book:
I try to do as little pure research as I can get away with. Part of this is sloth, part is a shortage of time, and a large part is a fear the book will read too much like a research paper. I’m constantly aware of the risk involved when the author tries to make sure the reader knows every damn thing said author knows about the subject at hand. That’s great if you’re writing non-fiction. It’s death for a novelist.
That said, I do a lot of reading and viewing and web surfing that fill the role of research but don’t fit the definition of actively looking for specific things. My Penns River series of police procedurals is a good example. I’ve been reading non-fiction about what it’s like to be a cop ever since I discovered Connie Fletcher’s wonderful series of interviews that began with What Cops Know in 1990. Fletcher went on to write five similar books on different aspects of police work. I’ve read—and re-read, and re-re-read—all of them.
Cop memoirs—first- or third-person, doesn’t matter—are great sources. I read them because they’re full of fascinating stories, but also because I’m immersing myself in how cops think, what they notice, common habits, and their manner of speaking. The hope is that I’ll gain a feel for cops as people. This should allow me to work in what I’ve learned in the best way possible: between the lines.
The books I read are rarely about specific cases, they’re about the cops and their lives and careers. A quick look at my bookshelf shows Edward Conlon’s Blue Blood, Gina Gallo’s Armed and Dangerous, William Roemer’s Man Against the Mob, Bo Dietl’s One Tough Cop, James Wagner’s My Life in the NYPD*, and Adam Plantinga’s 400 Things Cops Know, along with all six of Fletcher’s books, which I consider first-person because they’re basically transcribed bull sessions.
(* -- Wagner’s other book, Jimmy the Wags: Street Stories of a Private Eye, is not only full of the same kind of stuff from Wagner’s career as a PI, but might be the funniest book I ever read. I mean laugh out loud tears in my eyes funny.)
In third-person books, there’s Joe Pistone’s Donnie Brasco and its follow-up, Unfinished Business. (Way of the Wiseguy is Pistone’s spot-on look at how mobsters think and behave aside from criminal acts.) Del Quentin Wilbur’s A Good Month for Murder takes its cue from David Simon’s seminal work Homicide: a Year on the Killing Streets by following a homicide squad around and taking what comes.
Simon repurposed much of what’s in Homicide for his first two TV series, Homicide and The Wire. Therein lies a great research tidbit. Find out which fictional books, TV series, and movies get it right, and combine entertainment with research. Joe Wambaugh broke this ground with books like The New Centurions and The Blue Knight, leading up to his masterpiece, The Choirboys. Television shows from Hill Street Blues through NYPD Blue and The Wire and beyond show all aspects of cops’ lives, and how they view different situations, both on and off the job.
I have received few, if any, more flattering compliments related to writing than was inadvertently paid to me last year at Bouchercon when Colin Campbell, ex-policeman turned writer, turned to me during a conversation and said, “You were police, right?” No, not at all, but it made me feel I must be doing something right.
You can follow Dana via his blog, on Facebook, or on Goodreads. Resurrection Mall is available from Down & Out Books and all major booksellers.
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