Police procedural

The police procedural is a sub-genre of the mystery story which tries to demonstrate accurately the activities of a police force as they investigate crimes.

History

There were earlier precedents, but Lawrence Treat's 1945 novel V for Victim has been cited as perhaps the first "true" police procedural.http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761559994_2/Detective_Story.html#p25, http://www.mysteryguide.com/hist-police.html

Related Topics:
Lawrence Treat - 1945

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One critic has suggested that Dragnet was "The most famous procedural of all time ... Actor/producer Jack Webb's catchphrase, 'Just the facts, ma'am,' has become a permanent part of the culture."http://www.mysteryguide.com/hist-police.html

Related Topics:
Dragnet - Jack Webb - Catchphrase

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Jack Webb also authored a non-fiction police procudural of the Los Angeles Police Department called "The Badge" in 1958 (reprinted by Thunder's Mouth Press, New York, 2005). In it he describes the procedures of the LAPD as it attempts to professionalize itself and its image into that of a scientific bureacracy in which crimes are solved by the work of many policemen and not by the genius of one mind, as detective fiction liked to suggest.

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