Town Research Revisited: A Marshal in Tiny Beulah

In the last post, when I told you about researching small towns to figure out what kind of police force you might use in your small town cozy mystery novels, I mentioned the little town of Beulah Michigan, which is too small for its own police force, but gets to cheat because it's the county seat.

Well, guess, what? In my research, I stumbled across a little article in that area newspaper, the Benzie Banner.  Back in June of 1932, they DID have their own police force.  Sort of...

New Village Marshal on Duty in Beulah

Those who have a tendency to be naughty are warned to watch their step hereafter while within the confines of Beulah. The newly appointed and commissioned village marshal, Ed Reddick, began his duties yesterday, June 15, and will continue actively thereat for the next three months. That should be sufficient notice to any and all who have been getting a bit careless with local ordinances lately.

A committee is being organized to locate a liberal quantity rustproof and highly resplendent metal from which to manufacture a suitable badge for the new official, and another carefully selected group of citizens has agreed to scour the woods for a husky white ash or ironwood log from which to fashion an adequate club. Prices are also being sought on a conventional streamlined derby and a choice assortment of brass buttons. Meanwhile, the police force began his new duties by painting the park benches a handsome Irish green.

You'll notice that local papers in those days could be very tongue-in-cheek.  Although there was almost never a byline, every story had a clear "voice" and very often different voices for different beats.  Even the hard news stories often felt a little gossipy, as though hearing the news from your neighbor over the back fence.

As for Marshal Reddick, his three month term implies to me that he's there to help deal with the summer people.  While some aspect of the resort business had been important to that part of Michigan for some time, it was around the 1920s that it seemed to pick up for Beulah.

I was curious to see if Ed Reddick was hired from in the community or outside it, so I looked him up in the 1930 census.  Beulah, at that time, was too small to have it's own designation in the census, so those residents were listed in the larger township, Benzonia.

And yes, Ed Reddick did appear, two years before his appointment to the job, along with his wife Rose and son, Ed jr.  However, they were crossed out.  I suspect this was because they themselves were summer residents.  The census taker started to take their information, and then found out that they didn't actually live there.  (There were other Reddicks in the area, perhaps relatives to visit.)

This, of course, would be another fun detail to use in a cozy mystery: the town marshal being a tourist hired to deal with the other tourists, and expected to leave the townfolk alone.

Well, back to my research... see you in the funny papers!

Writing Cozy Mysteries: Researching Your Town

Over on Elizabeth Spann Craig's Writing the Cozy Mystery this week, she's writing about developing a mystery series, and things to think about when developing your sleuth.  Someone in the comments asked a question: can a small town have a police chief?

Short answer: yes, any size town can have a police chief.  IF they have a budget for a police force.

However, there are a whole lot of variations on how small towns are policed (including "not at all"). And it varies even more by region.  (An American "constable" in one state has a whole different meaning than in another, for instance.  And it's all very different than a British constable.)  And even though cozy mysteries are not "realistic" and your fictional small town may be a fantasy, it's still important that the town have an authentic flavor.

I mean, as readers, we want it to feel like a real, if very comfortable, place.

And since I am currently up to my ears in regional/historical research, I figure it's time to talk to you about doing some easy online research into towns and police forces.

Your tools will be Google Maps, Wikipedia, and then Google Search. And, of course, a healthy dose of amateur-sleuth curiosity.  There are a whole lot of more advanced tools that you may enjoy, but you won't need them unless you start sliding from "cozy" into one of the more traditional mystery areas (such as historical or regional mystery).

What Kind of Town?

This will go a lot quicker if you already have a town or region in mind.  And you may already have that: a town where you grew up, or visited or even live right now.  If so, great; you can skip to the step with Wikipedia.  However, if you haven't been to this town in a while (or just never get out), you may want to play around with this step, because it can be fun.  Also if you want to disguise your town -- fictionalize it -- you may want to research some similar towns to give you some variety of details to change.

The other thing to think about is what kind of stage this town will set for your story.  Do you want your sleuth to be able to walk around the town to talk to people? Do you want there to be a Main Street? And what about side streets?  Should there be more than one diner or restaurant in town?  How far from a mall or movie house?  Should there be a back street or dark alley where you can set some skullduggery? Maybe even a suspense scene, as your sleuth pursues or is pursued by a mysterious dark figure.

Or is it more the sort of place where there are four or five buildings at a cross roads, and your sleuth has to drive her truck from farm to farm to talk to witnesses and suspects?

When you have an idea of the kind of activity you'll have in your story, you'll know what your town "looks" like in terms of a streets and such.

So we know the region, and what the town will look like... but is it a town that will support a police force? Will the town have a mayor, or just a city council?  How big of a town do you need for what you want?

Google Maps, a Writer's Best Friend

We'll start our research by looking for real towns in the region we want, which look about right in terms of the street maps.

First of all, if you are not very familiar with it, you can start by clicking on this Google Maps Link, and more than likely it will take you to whatever town you happen to be in now. (If it can't tell what town you're in, it will probably show you a map of the U.S.)  If the region you are looking for is nearby, then click on the minus button in the lower right corner to zoom out. (The plus is for zooming in.)  And you scroll around the screen by clicking on the map and dragging it.

If your town is in a different region, you may want to type in a place name in the search box upper left, and let Google zoom you to that location.  (Or just do as I do and zoom way out, drag the map to center on where I want to go, and zoom back in again.)

So you get to your region -- stay a little zoomed out, so that you can scroll around and browse for towns.  When you see a likely town, zoom in on it.  Do you like the look of the street map? Can you work with that as a dramatic stage for your series?

Check it out with "Street View."  If you've never used Street View, it's lots of fun, though limited for small towns.  There is a little yellow man icon in the lower right corner, if you pick him up with your cursor, you can move him to a spot on the map -- but only if that spot has been photographed by the StreetView Mobile.  You can tell those roads because when you hover over them with the little yellow guy, a blue line appears on the street.  Drop the little guy on one of those streets, and suddenly you are in a 3-D view of the town.  To get back to the regular map, there's a "back to map" link in the lower left corner.

With small towns, you usually only get the main street or maybe two main cross-roads streets.  But that can be enough to give you a look at the character of the place.

So you can pick a town and just research that, but my suggestion is that you pick three towns -- the one that seems the ideal size, and then the biggest that will still serve your needs, and the smallest.

Just as an exercise, I'm going to suggest you look at a town called Westphalia, Michigan, which looks like a quintessential cozy small town.  There's a smaller town near by called Pewamo (to the north west) and the large town of St. Johns a longer ways to the East.

From this point we catch up with the people who already had a town in mind.

Wiki Your Town

Whether you found them on the map, or are going with a town you already know, look your towns up on Wikipedia.  You may find only dry facts, but these are important if you are to track down things like how the town is policed.  So let's look up Westphalia:

We learn that there were 923 people living in Westphalia in 2010, and that it is located within Westphalia Township, which is in Clinton County.  You can click on the links to learn more about the township and county, but for now, we just want to know their names, because this town might be policed by a force from the village, township, OR county.

We also learn from Wikipedia about the demographics -- what race (and how diverse the town is -- which Westphalia is not particularly, but there appears to be at least one representative in town from each of the racial/ethnic categories measured by the census). You learn the median income, and how many young and old people.  And there is a little about the history too.

But Wikipedia doesn't a have any information about the police or fire or how the town governs itself.  (Local governments -- mayors, school boards, etc -- often play a big part in cozy mysteries.)  It also doesn't tell you the kind of businesses and services there might be locally.  Is there a vet for your sleuth's cat?  Is there an urgent care in town?  How many restaurants are downtown?

Remember: Every region will be different in terms of what size town will provide different things. Tiny suburban towns will depend more on larger nearby cities. Tiny rural towns need to be more self-sufficient. Tiny resort or vacation areas tend to need more resources in comparison to population, because they have visitors to serve.  The south will be different than the north, etc.

So We Move On To Google

So we know from Wikipedia that Westphalia is about 900+ population, Pewamo is half the size at 400+, and St. Johns is a veritable metropolis, at nearly 8000 in population.  (It is still however, thought of as a "small town" by most Americans.)

Now we can Google the town name for more info about just about anything: restaurants, vetrinarians, do they have medical marijuana (which would make for a different kind of laid back cozy mystery -- but it might be a necessity of some elderly sleuth with glaucoma...)

But I'm going to concentrate on police and town governance first:

When I Google "Westphalia, Michigan Police" the first thing Google gives me is info on the Portland, St. Johns and Grand Ledge Police Departments (with the information that the Grand Ledge cops are closed on Sunday).  If you scroll down the page, I find the "Village of Westphalia, Michigan" website.

Town websites can be a treasure trove of info for the researcher.  Some are amazingly full of information. (And some, sadly, are not.)  I'll often find things that surprise me, even though I've been researching small towns for a while.  And the first time you research small towns, you are likely to find a lot of things that surprise you.

For instance Westphalia doesn't have a mayor, it has a president.  Also, there is no police department -- for that you have to call the Clinton County Sheriff's office, which is run out of St. Johns (but is separate from the St. Johns Police Department).  And when those Grand Ledge cops are closed - as mentioned at the top of the Google page -- the sheriff's department will likely be the ones answering the call.

This is important to know when you are dealing with mysteries in small towns.  Also, these are the sort of thing that can make for great plot turns. You call the cops, expecting to get the local cop who knows something about what's going on, and instead you get a deputy from three towns away.

Another factor is the fire and emergency response.  Westphalia uses the township fire department -- so that service is not just for the town/village, but is responsible for the whole township, including all the farms and smaller unincorporated villages in the 36-square mile area that makes up Westphalia Township. (but given that the department is plunk in the middle of the township, nothing is more than 3-4 miles away - not like depending on the county.)

Looking at Pewamo, and their village website, I see a little more cultural information on their website.  (This is common - often the tinier the town, the more the website is a work of love for some member of the community.)  However we see NO mention of the police or fire departments. Not even references to the township or county.

So, I Google Pewamo Police Department, and, wow, Google actually gave me a result!  With a "street view" picture of the location and everything!

Except that the picture just shows us a brake shop on the corner in the center of town.  That would be cool if that were really the police department (a GREAT cozy mystery kinda quirk) but in fact, Google is just showing us the center of town.  There is no police force to find, but Google is trying to be helpful here by showing me the town.

Even after several different tries, I can't find any reference to how Pewamo is policed.  If I were doing factual research, I would have to call the township office, but since we're just looking for a model for our cozy mystery series, I'm not going to bother.  I'll just go with the Westphalia model, or go searching for another tiny town with more information.

Towns Vary

If I had gone on to research more towns, I might have found Bath Michigan.  If you zoom in on Bath Township in Google Maps, it looks like it might be on a par with Pewamo. Similar number of streets, maybe a little more spread out.

But Bath has its own police department.  And if you look it up on Wikipedia, the population is listed as over 2000.  Hmmmm.

Well, the reason is simple: Bath is not a village or town.  It's a township.  Normally a township is not so much a governmental body as a simple geographic location.  If  you're from the midwest or west, it's how they measured the land before settlement: Each township is six miles square, with 36 one mile sections.  They gave them names, but they didn't turn them into governmental bodies.  It's just a way of saying where something is.

And sometimes people in a township will charter a local government, and sometimes they don't.  So the actual downtown of Bath is a teeny tiny town, with a police department and police chief -- but the township covers a lot of rural territory.  Bath also has one other factor: it's right on the edge of a larger metropolitan area, so the population density in the rural areas is higher than usual. It has a whole lot of 5-10 acre farms, and 1-2 acre lots.

Another variation on the tiny town: Beulah, Michigan is smaller than Pewamo. It only has 300+ people.  It also doesn't have it's own police cheif or school system.  It is one of the towns I based Potewa on for my Man Who series.  (And I actually use the region all the time in many things I write.)

However, Beulah happens to be the county seat for the smallest county in Michigan, which is very convenient, because it means that the county sheriff is centered right there in town.  It's exactly as though Beulah has it's own police force, court system, jail and everything. But it's still a tiny town. ... sort of.

It's also a resort town.  The whole area is filled with summer cabins and little hotels and such. And so even though the permanent population is small, over summer ths population swells by four or five times. That gives the town resources to pay for that police force and all the amenities.

Which means, for the writer and the resident, that it's a small town with a lot of the advantages of a big one.

When I first researched the Benzie County Sheriff's department, they only had one detective, and his job, aside from following up on ordinary criminal reports, was mainly visiting schools for the drug education program.  Now they actually have a detective bureau, which has a Sergeant who does most of the investigating, and supervises a number of patrol deputies who have detective training, and can be called on when needed.

While I have plans for my Potewa force to grow a little, at the moment, I am using the more cozy model, where the detective is a guy who retired from a larger down-state force, to take a job up north where he could go fishing even if the pay wasn't good.  As employers in the Traverse City area say: "A view of the bay is half the pay."

And that brings me to the final bit about developing your town and police force:

Culture

The nature, power, size, relationships of your police department is going to be affected by the nature of the community.

The example above, about the detective who just wants to go fishing: that community is ideal for a cozy mystery.  The whole culture is oriented toward leisure and positive things.  Even back in the day of the first puritan settlers -- they came to the wilderness to establish a college which would accept people of all races, creeds, colors and both sexes.  And I don't know if it was the beauty of the place, or the stars in their eyes, but these dour congregationalists evolved quickly and easily from people who wanted to make the world better, to people who wanted to make the world happy.

And that affects the police department, especially in fiction, where details have extra meaning.  It effects the character's backstory: how the members of said department came to town, and how they interact with the town. In case of my series, the sheriff's family goes back for generations, so he naturally takes a host-like attitude to those around him.  And this is true for many of his deputies.  Others, like the detective, are very relaxed, because this, to them, is a place of vacation.  He may be just putting in time at work, but always with a smile because he's going to be fishing as soon as he clocks out.

And I think that also effects what the mission of policing is: in a resort community, policing has a lot in common with playground supervision and bar tending.  A lot of crowd management, dealing with customers who are having a bit too much fun.  And this leaves an opening for your amateur sleuth, because in a resort town, the police are busy.

On the other hand, I once lived in a small rural town where the job of the police was to make sure nobody ever presses charges.  Seriously, the town had no budget to prosecute, so even though it had a lot of ordinances, the police could only enforce them if one of the council members was the complainant.  And that wasn't because they were sucking up to the boss, but rather because the council members were the only ones who could release the funds to prosecute.

This also not a bad model for the cozy mystery writer, because it means that the police must be diplomats, talking to everyone, calming everyone down... but also maybe a little reluctant to press anything too far for fear they'll get into a situation they wont be allowed to deal with.  And that leaves an opening for the amateur sleuth to be hard-nosed and press on in investigating the case.

However, you do it, research doesn't just give you facts or accuracy, it also gives you hooks into interesting situations and details, so you can create a fascinating place for your readers to cozy into.

I've rambled on long enough. (Sorry that it IS a ramble -- don't have time to rewrite and edit.)  Got to get back to my family history research. I'm finding an awful lot of inspiration right now (not that I need any more).

See you in the funny papers.

Sept Dare Day 2 - Policeman As Community Member

I'm a little behind on the critiques I meant to do yesterday. That's partly because the first one was tough. (It was a case where the author had a good thing going, and the problems were subtle but important. Hard to explain without making it sound worse than it was.)

In the meantime, I want to wrap up my series of posts on different kinds of police characters in the amateur sleuth story. (Most of these archetypes also apply to private eye stories too.) I'm talking about supporting and secondary characters, here.

The last archetype I want to talk about is the police officer as community member. Often police are depicted as outsiders, or at least someone in a position which strictly separates personal and professional. We assume that they have homes and families, and yes, a particular policeman may take things personally and not be perfectly armored and separated from society. But on the job, their position is to be a little detached.

But that's not always the place of the policeman in fiction. We can start with the negative stereotypes of the town sheriff who is also the town boss, or a corrupt cop who represents a community of gangsters instead of the law. These are common in hard-boiled detective fiction. Sometimes those policemen are bosses, and sometimes errand boys - but wherever they fall in the pecking order, they aren't about the law or the rules. They're about the clan.

And there are positive versions of these guys. From Andy Taylor to most of the sheriffs in westerns - these are the guys who take care of their community and protect it. I was just watching the wonderful Altman flick Cookie's Fortune. Like all Robert Altman films, this is a joyful story about community (even if there is a pot-boiler crime story driving the plot). At one point in the story, the smart detective from the state shows up to take over the investigation, and the local deputy insists he's wrong about the chief suspect. "How do you know it's not him?" asks the smart guy from the state . "'Cause I've fished with him," says the deputy.

When I think about it, I realize that this is the model used most outside of mystery fiction (which makes sense - the police as characters, not positions). And it's the model I use the most myself. It's very flexible. You can mix this model with just about any of the others. You can have any kind of character at all.

In my work-in-progress, Sheriff Walter "Rosie" Rosewalt is definitely the protector of the community type. I wanted to make him a chief of police, but I realized that this town is too small for it's own police force, and that in similar counties in the region I'm writing about, the only police are usually the county sheriff's office. As this town is the county seat, it works out in terms of location of the office as well.

Rosie has certainly fished with any number of local suspects, and been mushrooning, and donated stuff to the local rummage sales, and his wife undoubtedly has provided cassaroles for the funeral suppers of any number of victims of local crimes and accidents. (And probably was their teacher in school too.)

But more importantly for the story, Rosie is also the protagonist's uncle. And since Karla is the daughter of Rosie's hippy-dippy younger sister, the whole concept of authority is right out the window. (Not that she doesn't respect him, it's just that he's "Uncle Rosie" and besides he's The Man, and there are things you can't tell The Man about.) This gets around one of the problems with the police as a more fully rounded character who is tied up in the community: you don't have as much excuse for your amateur sleuth getting involved.

It's easier to use this kind of model in the more suspense type story. With suspense, the main character usually gets wrapped up in something that involves deep dark secrets, and often can't simply step back and let the police handle it.

I think Rosie will provide some good cozy conflict for the series. Both Karla and George like Rosie, and even look up to him, but Rosie knows that neither one of them can be trusted. He knows that whatever it is they are up to, it's probably benign (at least on Karla's part) but certainly misguided and possibly illegal.

And that's needed for this series. Unlike some sleuthing pairs, neither George nor Karla disapproves of the other's sleuthing and risk taking. They encourage each other altogether too much. They're like the original Chip and Dale. (Not the Rescue Rangers.) Any conflict is playful bantering. Rosie, I think, completes the model by providing a little balance.

Of course, this is the first story, so these elements are just developing. But for any series, you have to think ahead to where it is going. And I think in this case, the supporting cop is definitely a part of a sleuthing trio.

( The other entries in the series are Columbo Ex-Machina, The Dismissive Policeman, and Policeman As Nemesis.)

Policeman as Nemesis

(This is a series of articles on police as secondary characters in mystery novels. The other entries in the series are Columbo Ex-Machina, The Dismissive Policeman, and Policeman as Community Member.)

As I mentioned last time, Inspector Slack might be at odds with Miss Marple, might resent her, but he was always on the same side as she was. They had the same goal.

But there is a common police character who does not have the same goal as the protagonist. Sometimes the policeman is the actual antagonist of the story. This happens most often in stories that aren't actually mysteries, but rather straight crime stories. Columbo, Crime and Punishment, Les Miserables, The Fugitive. And for that matter, Raffles, Arsene Lupin, Zorro, The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Saint.

When your hero is outside the law - whether he's a criminal, or accused of a crime, or some shadowy vigilante - it's the job of the policeman to stop him. These stories are often games of cat and mouse, and the policeman is a foil for the protagonist. Columbo, and Porfiry Petrovich (of Crime and Punishment) are mild, ordinary, hard working characters facing off against arrogant criminals. In the movie version of The Fugitive, Richard Kimball is an amateur at being a fugitive, and he bumbles his way through by the skin of his teeth, while Marshal Sam Gerard pursues with menacingly super-competent precision. Gentleman burglars and swashbucklers tend to be chased down by working class plodders.

Sometimes such characters are downright villainous - as with Citizen Chauvelin, who is the nemesis of the Scarlet Pimpernel. Chauvelin seems to be a true believer in the revolution, but he keeps secrets from his superiors, and plays games to meet his own ambitions. Like all villains, he's really after power and self-aggrandizement. He's willing to murder men, women and children, and he's equally willing to release enemies of the revolution to further his own political ends. He's a blackmailer, and a liar. (And yet he still manages to be somewhat smarter and better than the evil men he works for - who can't seem to moderate their evil, even when it's in their own best interests. They often try to intimidate and blackmail Chauvelin, and he plays them for a bigger prize than he might otherwise get.)

In the mystery, however, the policeman is usually some sort of good guy. He may be like Sam Gerard or Javert from Les Miserables, and be frighteningly single-minded. Just think about the scene in The Fugitive when Gerard tracks Kimball into the drain pipes of the dam, and Kimball tells him "I did not kill my wife!" and Gerard says "I don't care!" It's not Gerard's job to judge. It's his job to catch, and he'll do it no matter what. However, when faced with the truth, he does do the right thing.

All nemesis characters have to be good at their jobs. Unlike the Inspector Slack type, the character has to be a good match in skills for the hero.

A good example of this would be Chief Inspector Teal of The Saint. Teal is in a difficult position, because he and The Saint are really on the same side when it comes to catching the bad guys. However, The Saint breaks the law, and Teal is equally out to get him. But it's nothing personal, and they often chat together and cooperate. Teal is not depicted as a fool. He is described in one book as so sharp, that if Scotland Yard's archives were to be destroyed in a fire, Teal could probably recreate them entirely from his own memory, including rough sketches of all the finger prints. Teal's main limits are that he is honest, and he must abide by the law... and also he's limited by the limits of his minions, who are really not up to the cleverness of The Saint.

I could go on for a while about this type of character, because I really like this model, and I'm working on a character who is a hybrid of this and some other kinds. But I think it's time to move on. I think I want to talk about the Plodder and the Mentor but I'm not quite sure of what I want to say yet.


(The other entries in the series are Columbo Ex-Machina, The Dismissive Policeman, and Policeman as Community Member.)

The Dismissive Policeman - Inspector Slack

Inspector Slack is the classic disdainful detective that you see over and over again in cozy mysteries. Christie herself didn't use him that much, nor did she develop him beyond a one-note caricature. He was ambitious, prejudiced and only moderately competent. (The one thing he wasn't was a slacker.) He didn't have a real relationship with Miss Marple. He didn't want one. He didn't even provide much opposition to her. He just ignored her, along with ignoring the truth, and thereby provided the need for her to intervene.

When the BBC made the wonderful adaptations starring Joan Hickson, they cast David Horovitch, and they beefed up the role to be more of a foil for Miss Marple. It was necessary because drama is about external conflict - a conflict among characters and their motivations. They didn't really change Slack so much as just let out the emotions that you know had to be there.

The Slack as written is a boring character. As presented by Horovitch, he is a little more interesting. He's not merely annoyed at this woman he'd rather not even acknowledge, he's got a full range of peevish resentments. Slack is a man who lives in a predictable pecking order, and he believes in it. He has position and authority, and he should be able to send little old ladies on their way with a pat on the head. But he's also an underling, and when his superiors force him to work with that silly old puss, he does it. He does it with resentment. He may even feel a little threatened by her success, but he does as he's told.

Because in the end, he and Miss Marple are on the same side. And when she uncovers the crook, he's the first to leap forward and stop the guy from getting away. And in the end, Slack does have to give her a little grudging respect.

I think, when it comes to writing a character like Slack - one who is really there to just acknowledge that the police should be doing this job - you have two choices. You can write like Christie did and just get him off stage as quickly and neatly as possible, and keep him out of the way. There is a certain risk to this, however. While Christie never bothered me much, I can say that I have been annoyed at many other writers who treated their police characters too dismissively.

I think a good example is in Phillip Pullman's Ruby In The Smoke. I really liked that book, and it's been a while since I read it, but I was really annoyed when the heroine dismissed the detective as quickly and thoroughly as he dismissed her. My immediate thought was that he had perfectly good reasons to dismiss her. Maybe he shouldn't have, but she was a child, and a civilian. She has something to prove to him. He, on the other hand, deserved a little respect for the fact that that was his job. I don't remember the scene exactly, but I do remember suddenly losing all respect for the heroine. He may have been a jerk, but she came across as an ignorant little brat.

A little more characterization can fix a situation like that. The more the character is an individual, the more leeway you have to judge them poorly. Otherwise you might just want to leave the judgment out, just don't characterize at all.

ADDENDUM: when I first wrote this post, it had been a very long time since I read Murder At The Vicarage, and I had not remembered that she had given him quite a bit of attention in that book. I recently reread Vicarage, and was very pleased to see that she gave Slack his due. Although he was arrogant and dismissive, he was also competent, and often a step ahead of the Vicar who narrates the book.

Next time I think I'll talk about the policeman as nemesis.

(The other entries in the series are Columbo Ex-Machina, Policeman As Nemesis, and Policeman as Community Member.)

Columbo Ex Machina

One of my favorite types of cop characters is what I call the "Columbo Ex Machina" character. This is a character who lurks deceptively, often dismissed by the protagonist as useless, and then pops out to save the day at the end. You most often see this kind of character in romantic suspense. He may even be the hero, working secretly in the background and arrives in time for the rescue, despite the heroine's best (and misguided) efforts to thwart him.

This character can be even more fun, though, if it isn't a romantic lead. I think the perfect example of this is Lt. Nathan Shapiro, the sad-sack NYPD detective created by Frances and Richard Lockridge. While the later Shapiro stories took on a more police procedural style, the first few were suspense stories in which Shapiro seemed to play a minor role. (Two stories of this kind are "The Drill is Death" and "Murder and Blueberry Pie.")

The protagonist of the story would be locked in a life or death struggle, perhaps even accused of a crime he didn't commit. In the background, Shapiro would schlep a long, in his own depressed way, one step behind the bad guys. He was so mild and easy to dismiss. He even dismissed himself. The other cops would be fooled by the villain's plot, and Shapiro, when he found himself dissatisfied with the case, assumed that he must be wrong. Those other cops were so much sharper than he was.

But little details would bug him, so he would slowly and sadly follow it up. He was a great device for building suspense because the audience knows he's right. They want him to just keep poking, even though all the forces in the universe are pushing him to drop it. And meanwhile the hero or heroine would have no reason at all to believe this sad, discouraged little man would be their savior. But then, at the end, he would show up, gun in hand, sadly apologizing for taking so long about it. It was like being rescued by Droopy, and it was very satisfying.

Of course, this kind of character doesn't have to be a policeman. Agatha Christie used this model sometimes with Miss Marple - just letting her sit in the background, knitting, while the story followed other characters who were desperate and mystified. I think this is actually a good model for refreshing a familiar character. The audience knows exactly what the character is capable of, so a little goes a long way, and the fact that the protagonist may not realize just how valuable this person is, well, that can build a lot of anticipation.

And speaking of Miss Marple - tomorrow I'll talk about that bastion of British policework, Inspector Slack.

(The other entries in the series are The Dismissive Policeman, Policeman As Nemesis, and Policeman as Community Member. )