Police are to fight crime, and the February edition of Red Herrings, the bulletin of the Crime Writers Association has arrived. As usual there are too many great articles to mention all of them. The first one that caught my attention is called Bad Press for the Police, by Harry Navinski. He says that protagonists are normally deeply flawed. They’re divorced, widowed, or having major relationship issues. They’re blundering fools and rebels. They’re often heavy drinkers, smokers, overweight and unfit. He’s only just got started and I’m fretting about how relatively normal Sir Anthony Standen is.
There’s a double-page spread on Double Diamond Dagger winners James Lee Burke and Lynda La Plante. Burke had a great background to write crime as he’d been a case worker with former criminals. His third novel was rejected one hundred and eleven times before being published and submitted for a Pulitzer Prize. Lynda La Plante began her career as an actor before branching out into writing. She is probably most well known for Prime Suspect.
There is a piece written by Gary Powell about Railway Detectives. Powell served in the British Transport Police for over thirty years. He now writes railway crime fiction. I’m ashamed to say that although I spent around a decade of my career working on the railways, my knowledge of the British Transport Police was limited to two very poor jokes that I had been told: “What’s the difference between a shopping trolley and a British Transport Policeman? A shopping Trolley has a mind of it’s own.” In similar vein, “What’s the difference between a shopping trolley and a British Transport Policeman? You can get more food and drink in a British Transport Policeman.” What I hadn’t been told is that the original Railway Police predated the Metropolitan Police. They remain the UK’s only national police service and were the first to employ police dogs. They were also the first police force in the UK to employ policewomen.
Finally there is an article by Fiona Forsyth called Livia’s Poison. This addresses which poison Emperor Augustus might have been poisoned with, if his wife Livia had indeed murdered him with poison. All I will say is that it’s affected my thinking about The Favourite Murder, my work in progress and the fifth book in the Sir Anthony Standen Adventures.