Crime: fiction and reality

Screen crime tales are nothing like reality, or even good crime novels

THE PHONE RANG. It was the BBC calling from London. They wanted your humble narrator to do a live report on a breaking crime story. Surely some mistake. Me? No, you must want a real, rough tough crime correspondent, not a delicate author of humor columns and fiction.

“We thought it would be interesting to have someone who has written detective novels to report on a REAL crime,” the producer said.

So I accepted the assignment. It was a cracker of a story, the one about the mysterious Hong Kong villain who has been throwing bottles of acid from rooftops into crowds below. I duly read the details, spoke to crime reporters and drafted a report.

Rain Man is on the loose!

He unleashes liquid death from the skies before vanishing into thin air.

Since Hong Kong buildings can be up to half a kilometer high, the perp is already far from the victim from the moment he commits the crime. What drama. What excitement.
*
What rubbish, said skeptical friends at the bar after scanning my script.

“Good crime stories are about brilliantly evil villains committing perfect crimes,” said unemployed banker friend Andy. “The acid-dropper doesn’t qualify. His victims are random and he has no motive.”

I told him he was making a common error. Most crime stories don’t focus on villains, but on brilliant investigators. Think of Sherlock Holmes or, er, Inspector Gadget.

Andy responded: “In that case, they’re about genius detectives making deductions, like Jodie Foster as the criminal profiler in Silence of the Lambs.”

He explained that a profiler would first deduce that Rain Man was male. “If the victims are random, it’s a guy. Women limit themselves to tormenting people they know, such as their husbands.”

I shook my head. Another common error. Crime novels are mostly about police procedure. They are about dull, plodding fact-checking work.

In the books of genius crime writer Elizabeth George, you have to wade through 300 pages of cops sifting data before the first clue is found.

In Silence of the Lambs, Ms Foster is doing routine address-checks when she stumbles on the killer.

Rain Man committed his crime at a location once listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the most densely populated part of the world (not a joke). Police will have to interview two-thirds of the world’s population, and those are just the people in the queue at McDonald’s (a joke, possibly).
*
Two days after I made my report for the BBC, Hong Kong police announced that they had made an arrest. How had they done it? A police spokesman said they had interviewed hundreds of people, looked at thousands of faces on security cameras and checked records of train travelers until they located the stored value train ticket the suspect used every day.

I showed the guys at the bar the newspaper report.

They were amazed.

“You’re right,” Andy conceded. “It really isn’t a battle of wits between a criminal genius and a clever detective. It really is about the boring process of sifting through piles of data.”

He looked at his watch and then rose to leave. “I told myself I really must read one of your detective books one day,” he told me. “But now I don’t think I’ll bother.”
*
*

Technorati Tags: acid thrower,elizabeth george,police procedural,crime writer,crime fiction

Comments

[Julie]

You are right. Crime novels are about the detective, not the criminals. The criminals are just a device to move the plot along. Otherwise the detectives would just be sitting around chatting/cleaning/drinking/dating/getting on with their lives and they would be classified as chick lit.
I think someone should write a thesis on what choice of detective novels shows about readers' aspirations.
Some of the US ones feature knitting/quilting and recipes!
Patricia Cornwell even published a Kay Scarpetta recipe book.
Would you like the linguini or lasagne with your helping of psychopathic killer?
At least the vampire novels haven't done that. Yet.

[Julie]

Mind you, some of the food in the Feng Shui detective books sounds pretty good . . .

[Another booklover]

This shows why movies can never replace books.

If you compare the book version of Silence of the Lambs with the movie version, you see the difference.

The movie is a high-speed thriller, not much better or worse than any other.

The book captures two things that the movie doesn't. First, it captures the proceduralism of detective work. As you say, in the book, Clarice Starling is not a glamorous detective. She leaves the job of catching the villain to the armed SAS-style team while she does the mundane job of visiting a list of addresses of possible suspects. They go to the wrong address and she happens to go to the right one. This is not chance, and is a poke in the eye from the bookwriter to filmwriters in general. He is saying; this is how it really happens. Second, the book captures the terror of the victim much better than the movie.

As a result, the book is truly chilling as it feels real. It focuses on the real horror of being captured by a sick-minded man, and the real difficulties of the data-sifting that leads to his capture.

Nothing could be more different than the quick-fix crime stories of the screen. Long live crime novels!

[Chamin]

The Sri Lankan Police and Intelligence Agency (CID) have a different approach to find criminals. This is best explained by the following story:

There was a contest to select the best intelligence agency in the world. FBI, KGB and CID were invited. Each group was given a 50-acre forest with one rabbit and asked to capture it.

The FBI deployed loads of sensors, distributed leaflets in 27 languages, and waited for a month. After analyzing all the sensor data and satellite photos, they concluded that there is no animal specie called "rabbit."

The KGB dropped Napalm bombs and burned the entire forest. They claimed "now that the rabbit is definitely gone, we can declare the mission complete."

About 8 CID officers went into the forest. After a few hours, voices were heard from inside: "Did you think you could escape from us? You were dead wrong! We'll teach you a lesson once we get to the headquarters!!"

Then they came out, dragging a moose whose legs were tied. The moose was shouting "All right, I am a rabbit! Please stop beating me!!"

[Julie]

I like international law enforcement stories.

There was once an international police conference in Berlin.

The Germans were proud to be hosting it and proud of the efficiency of their police force. They bragged that all crimes in Germany were solved within 48 hours.

The Russians, however, were not impressed. They countered, with, "Hah. That's nothing. In Russia we know all about crimes 24 hours before they're committed."

[Foxlore]

One of my favorite detectives film series is The Thin Man.

To this day I still have a crush on Myrna Loy...

[Denise Murphy]

My thoughts as to who this perp is are in a recent post in my blog:

http://travels-with-denise.blogspot.com/search?q=shenzhen+pervy+cop

Do have a look. I always do this speculation-thing when interesting crimes occur and I'm truly surprised how often I turn out to be right.

Adore your column btw.

Regards
Denise