Police procedual recommendations from the 1970s/1980s

[Fambo Number Mive]

Can anyone recommend some police procedual authors from the 1970s and 1980s, books like John Westermann and Joseph Wamburgh. Nothing that requires too much concentration as my concentration is a lot lower than it used to be, basically nothing with complicated plots?

[Twonty Gostelow]

Definitely Ed McBain's 87th Precinct novels for me. Well overdue for a revival. The series covers roughly 50 years, starting in the 1950s, and almost certainly was an unacknowledged influence on Hill Street Blues (eg one of the 87th Precinct cops was the repugnantly corrupt Ollie Weeks, and HSB had the similar Charlie Weeks) and NYPD Blue et al. Very authentic on police work too, and ahead of its time early on.

I've read every 87th Precinct novel - something I once mentioned in a job interview after I'd started to panic.

[Dr Rock]

C.A.T.S Eyes

[Pavlov`s Dog`s Dad`s Dead]

Definitely Ed McBain's 87th Precinct novels for me. Well overdue for a revival. The series covers roughly 50 years, starting in the 1950s, and almost certainly was an unacknowledged influence on Hill Street Blues (eg one of the 87th Precinct cops was the repugnantly corrupt Ollie Weeks, and HSB had the similar Charlie Weeks) and NYPD Blue et al. Very authentic on police work too, and ahead of its time early on.

I've read every 87th Precinct novel - something I once mentioned in a job interview after I'd started to panic.

Yes, seconded. The 87th precinct is a tremendous series. I vaguely remember there's one book written from Ollie Weeks' perspective, and McBain expands his character in an empathetic and humanising way.

Spoiler alert

Apropos of nothing, what was McBain's schtick about "October 24[?] - birthday of great men?" It doesn't seem to have been his own.

[close]

It's set in an earlier time frame than you were looking for, but also check out Maurice Procter's work. He was an ex-copper who took to writing procedurals. It's a lot less three-dimensional than McBain (in that all the coppers are honest, decent - by 1950s standards - men), but they contain a compelling evocation of mundane lives in '50s Northern English towns and cities (mainly a thinly disguised Manchester, although you can also identify places like Halifax and Littleborough). I've no way of judging, but his description of the nuts and bolts of police work in a pre-handheld-radio age seem convincing. Available as ebooks for a couple of quid a pop.

[studpuppet]

Terry Venables' finest hour.

[Twonty Gostelow]

Yes, seconded. The 87th precinct is a tremendous series. I vaguely remember there's one book written from Ollie Weeks' perspective, and McBain expands his character in an empathetic and humanising way.

Yes, Fat Ollie's Book.  I've just remembered he wrote a novel, Candyland, half of which was from an 87th Precinct perspective as Ed McBain, with the other half by his legally adopted name of Evan Hunter (which he used when he wrote The Blackboard Jungle and the screenplay for The Birds; his real name was Salvatore Lombino).

Spoiler alert

Apropos of nothing, what was McBain's schtick about "October 24[?] - birthday of great men?" It doesn't seem to have been his own.

[close]

Spoiler alert

The joke was that it is his birthday, October 15th, not 24th, but I could be wrong. It's also PG Wodehouse's birthday - before he became a full-time writer Hunter/McBain was executive editor of a literary agency whose clients included Wodehouse. That might be part of it.

[close]

[Pavlov`s Dog`s Dad`s Dead]

Spoiler alert

The joke was that it is his birthday, October 15th, not 24th, but I could be wrong. It's also PG Wodehouse's birthday - before he became a full-time writer Hunter/McBain was executive editor of a literary agency whose clients included Wodehouse. That might be part of it.

[close]

Ah, ok, thanks for clarifying. I vaguely (and, obviously, incorrectly) remember checking and finding that it wasn't - god knows what was going on back then in the addled puddle that passes for my mind. Maybe I read them all before Wikipedia was a thing, but at the same time one of the factors I remember enjoying about the series was that time moved on even though the characters never really seemed to age. So Steve Carella was already well into his career in the 1950s*, and still pounding the streets decades later. I'm genuinely curious now about when I discovered the 87th Precinct - for the life of me, I can't remember when I would have worked my way through most of the series.

* So Maurice Procter was writing contemporaneously, which realisation has left my hat languishing in a post-coital daze.

[Kankurette]

Another 87th Precinct fan here, my paternal granny was very into crime novels and she got me into them. The one I hated was Nocturne, because of the

Spoiler alert

scene where a bunch of college boys gang-rape a prostitute while suffocating her to death with a plastic bag

[close]

, but Romance, Tricks (the first one I read, when I was about 8 or 9 years old and didn't understand what a cock was, but thought Andy Parker was funny) and Ten Plus One are all favourites. You can tell when they were written because the '80s ones nearly always have coke-related plots, Ice and Lullaby being major examples. I did find the way he wrote black characters a bit awkward at times, especially Sharyn when she was dating Kling (poor bastard never had any luck with women) and kept worrying about her being black and him being white and was he dating her because she was black and so on.

On the subject of Ollie Weeks, there's a hilarious scene with him and an actor in Romance where the actor decides to improvise a load of lines Weeks made up when he was interviewing him. The director goes mental and storms out.

[Swift]

Terry Venables' finest hour.

I've read Hazell Plays Solomon. It's not a police procedural, more a Michael Caine-esque private dick in 70s London. I've kept some choice quotes. From a sex scene where Hazell is bedding a woman under suspicion -

'I want you now, please,' she murmured, savagely.

And she did get me, right there on that awful orange settee. She got more of me than she bargained for.

Without being too clinical, I could do everything but, if you follow. I was like an oil drill riding the stormy North Sea but the gusher would not flow.

...

I felt like Superman - but I could not deliver the final zap and wowie.

...

[She] eased her hips under mine and again I was drilling deep into the ocean bed and again she was convulsing.

Why be mealy-mouthed about it? I gave her a terrific seeing to - six times by her count - but the old rock-python refused to eject his juice.

He finally finishes by fondling her kneecaps as he seemingly has a fetish for knees, always noticing them when he meets a woman.

and then later... uh, this -

A beautiful, half-naked girl opened the door. She had black hair, deep brown eyes and the kind of smile that would corrupt an archbishop.

The top half of her white bikini was missing and the bottom half wasn't hiding anything but essentials. Her exquisitely smooth shoulders and boyishly-firm breasts glistened with drops of water.

Unfortunately she was about eight years old.

[Kankurette]

It's not quite Steve Bruce, Clive. Needs more Jaguar wanking and less paed.

[touchingcloth]

Sounds like the usual police procedure. Find woman. Grope woman. Rape woman. Maybe kill woman for a treat.