Review: Malcolm Gladwell Takes on Police Fiction--Good Points, Wrong Conclusion

 

 

By Claire Booth

Malcolm Gladwell takes on all sorts of subjects with his Revisionist History podcast, which I’ve listened to for years. Everything from college endowment funds to McDonald’s French fries has gone under his Gladwellian microscope.

Last month, listeners learned he’s a crime fiction fan. A huge fan, and he spent an episode on the modern murder mystery novel. It’s a lecture he gave during the New Orleans Book Festival, where he introduced his classification system for the mystery story.

His thesis was to see it through the lens of policing and how it then affects the public’s view of real-world law enforcement. No other profession gets so much space in books, television and movies. Professions like teachers and nurses don’t have to contend with perceptions created by screenwriters and authors. Law enforcement does.

“The stereotypes put forth in popular culture matter. They are the raw material people use to form their attitudes and perspectives. And I really worry that police narratives are doing the same thing. They’re doing an injustice to our understanding of the police.”

Police aren’t all good or all bad, Gladwell says bluntly, but the mystery story can portray them that way. In his view, the fiction that portrays them can be lumped into four categories:

He starts with the 1950s TV show Dragnet, which he calls one of the top five most influential shows of all time because it introduced to a mass audience the notion that police were good at what they did. That becomes “Eastern” on the four compass points of his “Taxonomy of the Modern Mystery Story.”

“Northern” stories are ones with incompetent police, where civilians have to step in and solve the crimes; here he lists detectives such as Hercule Poirot and Philip Marlowe.

Swing down to “Southern” and those are stories with corrupt authorities, where others have to come in and clean things up. He uses John Grisham as an example for this one.

Then of course, there’s “Western,” the only one that truly fits its namesake compass point. Those are stories with an absence of authority/police, just like the lawless frontier towns. He highlights Lee Child’s Jack Reacher books, because Reacher rides into a town, “kills scores of people, and never gets caught—so, Westerns.”

He tends to lump many subgenres together. This is, I know, a much more normal way to view things than the thin sub-sub-genres that crime fiction writers (like me) often find themselves slicing. But I like how I divide things, so I’ll do some quibbling here. His “Northern” classification isn’t police procedural at all, but rather amateur detective. And any modern mystery worth its salt will use more than one East/West/North/South in its plot and character development. “Modern” is what we do now—mixing all of these in a single work, as an acknowledgement that the world is not just four points on a compass.

Gladwell says he knows his categories are reductive, and that’s his point. That over the years, the genre has made it easy for two things to happen: for real police to be unjustly reduced to stereotypes, to less than what they really are; and to create fertile ground for a certain kind of narcissism to develop that moves away from the people they serve. “These are not novels and shows about solving crimes. They’re novels and shows about crime solvers … and where is the public in there?”

I think that good crime fiction—much current crime fiction—tries to address these questions and problems. I know I do. And I don’t think we’ve in any way exhausted the possibilities of the form.  

One other note:

There was a big lack of diversity in his name-checking. There’s only one direct mention of a woman—Murder She Wrote’s Jessica Fletcher, whom he lists when counting TV civilian detectives. In that same part of the discussion, he mentions Hercule Poirot, although he never does name Agatha Christie—or for that matter, her other, equally adroit (but female) amateur detective, Miss Marple.

He also doesn’t include any writers of color. Ed McBain, Raymond Chandler, John Grisham, Lee Child, Joseph Wambaugh, Daniel Silva. Dragnet, The Untouchables, Columbo, Slow Horses. All white male authors or cast with almost all white male actors. He makes good points with many of them. But there are plenty of non-straight white male writers who could have reinforced his ideas, too. Walter Mosley, Naomi Hirahara, Kellye Garrett, Sujata Massey, Kwei Quartey. Sara Paretsky, Patricia Cornwell, Joseph Hansen, Sue Grafton.

You clearly read deep, Malcolm. I look forward to hearing what you think when you read wide.

"Taxonomy of the Modern Mystery Story" was released July 26, 2023, as Season 8, Episode 12 of Revisionist History. You can listen to it here, or wherever you download your podcasts.

An Interview with S.A. Cosby

 

This week, I convinced acclaimed author of BLACKTOP WASTELAND and the upcoming RAZORBLADE TEARS, S.A. Cosby to chat with me about what he's up to, his thoughts on his recent success, and the challenge of writing cops in crime fiction in the very current (and historical) climate of the American police state.

If you haven't read Shawn's stories (and where the hell have you been if you haven't), I highly recommend you remedy that. Keep your eyes peeled for links to his work and the work of others below.

AC: So, since last we spoke (well, in person during the before times), you went off and released BLACKTOP WASTELAND, which I hear people seemed to like (and is releasing in paperback very soon). I mean, just a handful of award nods, glowing reviews, and a production deal, so no biggie. You're also about to release your second novel, RAZORBLADE TEARS (which I also heard is outstanding).

Guess that's a long way to walk to simply ask: how's it going? Has the success caught up with you yet, or is it all still soaking in?

SA: First it’s good to talk to you again my man. To answer the question, it's all incredibly surreal. Like 5 years ago I was getting yelled at by a customer trying to return a drill from the Pre-Cambrian period at my retail job and now my book is being optioned for a film. I got to chat with Walter Mosley. I was able to get a new car that doesn't come with arcane instructions (once you get to 55 you gotta put your arm out the window to keep it from tipping over).

It's more than I could ever have dreamed and it’s a little terrifying! 

 

AC: And to follow up on that. Is there a sense of wariness as you begin new projects with these successes in the proverbial rear view? Not so much the typical anxiety that comes from writing, but of the expectations that can sometimes (often) get laid on creators of color? Is there even a way to mitigate/deal with that kind of nonsense?

SA: Well, I’m aware that now the playing field is a little different. There are a lot of eyes on me watching how the next project will go. And we both know that WOC don't get as many at bats as other writers, so I feel some pressure and anxiety to maintain a certain level of engagement in regard to my writing, but when I sit down to write I put that out of my mind because ultimately that gets in the way of the story...and the story is the thing 

 

AC: Your next novel, RAZORBLADE TEARS, is set to tackle some very heady social topics. A story of two fathers united in a quest to avenge the deaths of their sons - sons who they were estranged from because of their sexual orientation. What led you to tackle subjects like these? Was there something that made this story compel you to make it come to life?

SA: The quick answer is I had a friend, also African American, close to my age, who came out a few years ago to his family and they were not supportive at all. And that person was devastated, and they told me " You know if I could do hair or lead a choir they wouldn't be so upset " and that statement shook me because in many ways it was true. It made me think about how prevalent homophobia is in our communities of color and how that runs parallel to systemic racism. I felt like I needed to talk about these issues in the only way I know how: through the prism of a crime novel. 

 

AC: You mentioned on Twitter that you're working on a third novel involving a black sheriff and you're editing a cop-themed anthology.

Your rep for being provocative maintains, man.

There's been a kerfuffle lately about writing cops in crime fiction and while I'm no fan of copaganda (and I'm comfortable assuming you aren't either) I do believe there's room for true examination of the broken police state. Is this something weighing on you as you write the next novel and as you prep to read through some of the subs that will come piling in soon?

SA: Yeah, I have no interest in writing about super cops who are perfect paladins riding on white horses. You don't have to be a POC to realize that idea is not only fantastical but also dangerous. But I think it’s important to have conversations about how policing affects our communities and our psyches. The book I'm working on is at its core an examination of what happens when a person of color tries to fix the system from the inside only to find out the foundation is rotten, and the house is on fire. The anthology I’m working on with Rock and a Hard Place Press takes this issue one step further with stories told from the point of view of people who are victims of that broken police industrial complex. In both cases I think writing is one of the best ways to talk about these issues. It's like using a mirror to fight a Gorgon. 

 

AC: Let's lighten the mood.

Who should we be reading that we aren't reading? Which authors out there are knocking your socks off?

SA: Oh man I'll give you four 

Yasmin Angoe, she has a great spy novel coming out later this year called HER NAME IS KNIGHT 

Andy Davidson, a fantastic horror writer (The Boatman’s Daughter) 

Heather Levy, (Walking Through Needles) 

Robert Jones Jr. Author of The Prophets 

 

AC: Last question. A little evergreen to cap things off. Name a song that just must be on the playlist for what you're writing these days.

SC: Haha hmmmm 

Hellhound on my Trail by Robert Johnson 

 

 

 

S. A. Cosby is an Anthony Award-winning writer from southeastern Virginia. He is the bestselling author of Blacktop Wasteland, a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice and Goodreads Choice Awards semifinalist, as well as Brotherhood of the Blade and My Darkest Prayer. When not writing, he is an avid hiker and chess player.

What Could Have Been and What Still Can Be

Photograph by James Willamor, CC-BY

by J.J. Hensley

Your first priority is to make it home at the end of your shift

That’s what I was told when I entered my first law enforcement academy for the Chesterfield County Police Department in Virginia. I was reminded of it again when I transitioned from local to federal and journeyed to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia. It was beaten into me again, to some extent, at the U.S Secret Service’s academy in Maryland, although the expectation changed if you were working a protective assignment and had to put yourself between a threat and a protectee. In that case, you made sure someone else got to go home, and if you got killed…well, nice job!

The people you work with are your brothers and sisters because nobody else understands

When you start working the streets, you see things most people do not. You see many people at their worst and rarely see people at their best. Two of my years as a patrol officer were on midnight shift, and I assure you I did not encounter the pillars of the community. In fact, many of the people I dealt with were drunk, high, or both and had come to the attention of the police for committing an assault, vandalism, or something much worse. A majority of the people you deal with on a daily basis don’t like you, or aren’t happy to see you because something tragic has happened to them. A vast majority of interactions can be negative, and over time, a strange thing happens. You end up only having cop friends, because who else works those hours and doesn’t get freaked out by your tales from the road? The next thing you know, people…just…people aren’t people anymore. They’re civilians.

Now you are in a subculture, and it is engrained in you to stand by your fellow officers. In extreme cases, officers will stand by each other no matter what. A classic, sad example is what we are witnessing in Buffalo where two officers assaulted a seventy-five-year-old man, and his fellow officers not only stood by them, but then the assaulting officers were cheered by other officers as they left the courthouse after an appearance. This is the blue line that has created a border in this nation, a border between two nations with different rules.

A training problem vs a cultural issue

I don’t know how many hours of defensive tactics and firearms training I went through between my academies and in-service training, but the number has to be incredible—unbelievable really. And it was beneficial, good training. The training wasn’t the issue. In fact, whenever an issue comes to light in an organization or process, the knee-jerk reaction is to always blame training, but it’s almost never the training. More times than not, it’s a communication, organizational, or cultural problem. My training was fantastic. It prepared me for my years in law enforcement, during which I had to draw my weapon, but never had to shoot anyone other than a rabid raccoon (sorry, dude), used my baton once (to break out a window), and never pepper sprayed a person. There were plenty of times I had to use some level of physical force, but many times I did not. In fact, I would guess 99% of my encounters with civilians required no physical use of force whatsoever.

Mopes, Dirtbags, and worse

So, after going through a local police academy, a couple of federal training programs, and gaining a good amount of practical experience, I’d consider myself fairly well-versed in law enforcement use of force issues. I’ve never been through the academy former Minneapolis Officer Derek Chauvin attended, but I can make certain assumptions with confidence. First, you never use more force than absolutely necessary to execute an arrest. Second, the neck contains the carotid artery, windpipe, and a portion of the spinal column. Applying pressure there for a long duration can cause serious injury or death. Third, once a subject is restrained, on the ground, and compliant, there is no need to continue any activity that may restrict breathing. In short, if you mess around with the neck you aren’t just asking for a tragedy to occur, you’re inviting it . It seems the Minneapolis PD did allow for the use of a chokehold (call it a carotid restraint if you would like, but that’s not the point). At the time of this writing, the city banned the tactic in the aftermath of Floyd’s killing. I was surprised the department had been using the tactic, as not only had I never been trained to use a chokehold, but had been explicitly trained  NOT to use one due to the risks involved.

Needless to say, I am horrified and furious at what we have all witnessed. Thanks to video evidence being available, I believe Derek Chauvin and his fellow officers will be held accountable for their actions. Not only are the actions caught on video terrifying, but there are also serious questions as to if there was even probable cause for the arrest,  and some reports that the responding officers escalated the situation upon arriving at the store. I’m sure these issues will be brought to light in the weeks to come. What I believe we will find as this case progresses is that George Floyd, like so many others, was not viewed as a person by the responding officers. He may not even have been a civilian. He was just another mope, or scumbag, or degenerate that was something…less. That is where this “us vs them” mentality has taken us. This is where the countless hours of survival training while being submerged in a subculture of isolation has taken us. When combined with poor HR practices that include hiring the wrong people, and the inability to fire poor performers, we find ourselves sitting on a powder keg.

What Could Have Been

This has led us to the demonstrations, disorder, and what could have…should have been said by our leaders in the first days of the protests. Contrary to what some are saying, the demonstrations we have seen are not just about George Floyd. They are about the deaths of George Floyd, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Philando Castile, and many others—some caught on video and many which have gone unnoticed. There have been too many racist cops for way too long. If you doubt this, research the number of lawsuits filed by minority officers and agents claiming they have been passed over for promotion due to race or disciplined unfairly. In fact, the Chief of Police in Minneapolis was a party to one of these suits several years ago. The problem exists, and there is no turning away from it anymore.

The mass demonstrations that broke out around the nation were an opportunity for our leaders to step up and acknowledge a long-standing problem that has plagued our country. Yes, there have been opportunists who have taken advantage of the moment to loot and cause destruction, but if one is going to use the argument that most cops are good then you must believe in the distinct probability that most demonstrators are good. Now…imagine the President stood at a podium and expressed empathy and a genuine desire to change the system. Here is an example of what could have been said and done:

The death of George Floyd was inexcusable. Any American with a conscience has to be outraged at what we witnessed, and I applaud those in the law enforcement community who have immediately denounced the actions that took place in Minneapolis. Mr. Floyd’s death is a call to action, albeit one that is too late for many. The policing profession is filled with good people doing a tough job, but we can do better. There have been too many instances of racism and abuses of power to ignore. The demonstrations we are seeing are not about one unjustified killing or a handful of bad officers. They are about many voices that have been ignored for far too long. 

Therefore, I am instructing the Attorney General to work with the Governors of each state to explore setting up National Hiring and Training Standards for law enforcement officers. There are major hurdles facing such an endeavor and many questions that will have to be answered. Issues regarding jurisdictions, resources, and budgets will undoubtedly bring about naysayers who will claim such a massive reform effort cannot be done. That we cannot afford this. My response to them is that we cannot afford to keep things the way they are. We need to ensure officers across the nation are meeting acceptable standards and do not have anything in their backgrounds that should exclude them from having the public’s trust. 

Additionally, I’m asking that the AG work with the states to ensure a standard of disciplinary measures is established. If an officer is fired from one department for an egregious act, he or she should not be able to get hired by another department. There have been too many examples of officers jumping from one department to another after being dismissed. I’m also instructing the AG to work with the governors to establish minimum pay standards for law enforcement officers. Police departments have to be able to hire professionals, and in many instances, this has not been the case.  

I want to assure all of you who have taken to the streets to demonstrate that we hear you. Change is coming. The police forces you see today are going to look much different in the near future. The “us vs. them” mentality in policing has not worked and will be driven out. We are all “us” now. As a nation, we are facing many challenges. We must face these challenges together as allies, not enemies. I vow to you,  I will work with you to start that process today.

However, as we know, that isn’t what happened. (Author’s Note: Well after this piece was written, Democratic lawmakers drafted The Justice in Policing Act of 2020 that includes some of these elements, although it is unclear if it will become a law.)  What occurred was the escalation of tensions as rhetoric spewed from Twitter and other outlets. The words “thugs” and “dominate” became favorites, and the pseudo-group ANTIFA became the new immigrant caravan at the gates. The military has been mobilized in some areas, and I fear the next move will be to threaten the “free” election in November, either through intimidation or by discrediting the results. If this sounds far-fetched,  watch the video of Trump’s photo op in front of St. John’s church again. It will be no surprise if law enforcement is used as a political tool of intimidation throughout the next few months. The results will be more distrust among the public and damage that will take decades to repair, if it can be fixed at all.

What still can be

Proposals for reform are ongoing. Perhaps the tide is turning, finally, and there will be a major cultural shift in law enforcement. What we need are stubborn voices of reason who present actual evidence-based solutions. Currently, there are calls to “Abolish ICE” and “Defund the Police.” Often, phrases like this come from those who do not have a complete understanding of what that might entail. For instance, ICE has come under fire for their detention and deportation activities, which fall under its Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO). However, ICE itself is a large organization which encompasses Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). HSI consists of about 8,500 people who deal with a myriad of crimes - human trafficking, child pornography, arms dealing, etc. - that have little or nothing to do with ERO.

Likewise, defunding police departments without thought or explanation as to what vital functions need to remain is a nonstarter. In the days since the defunding movement became popular, people have tried to clarify what this means (it’s actually a reallocation of funding and demilitarization – a.k.a. police reform), but the message is getting lost because it sounds too much like abolition. We need police. We even need police to have a reasonable amount of tactical (some would say ‘military-style’ equipment). What we desperately need is for officers to use it appropriately and have the right policies in place to govern its use. This demands a cultural shift in the profession, which will take time, effort, and persistence. “Abolish” and “Defund” make for nice sound bites, but those phrases are messaging failures, regardless of intent.

It is now essential for the reasonable voices within law enforcement (and some do exist) to speak out and demand reform. That process might be underway. The city council in Minneapolis has voted to disband the police department and create a new Public Safety Model. It’s unclear what this will entail, but opponents to this move have immediately taken to their keyboards and microphones to claim there will be no police force at all. I don’t believe that will be the case. In all likelihood, it will include a law enforcement component, but also civilian units focusing on social services and drug treatment. Will it work? I don’t know. But since the current model isn’t working, let’s find out. To repeat the same actions and expect different results is insanity. For too long, cultural norms and police unions protecting bad officers have stymied any real change. Rather than demand accountability from fellow officers, the law enforcement community has often circled the wagons to stand by those who are not worthy of the badge.

Training our officers to survive is crucial and should not go by the wayside. Let me be clear about this—the use of force, including deadly force, will always be present in the world of law enforcement. It’s not all unicorns and rainbows out there, and there are situations one simply cannot deescalate. There are hard, terrible people out there, and sometimes they have to be dealt with in a harsh, but legal, manner. However, the culture within law enforcement needs to be such that one not only knows how to survive, but also remembers how people are supposed to live. I have spent nearly my entire adult life in and around law enforcement, and officers and agents are vocal in their complaints about their agencies and departments, yet no other profession, to include the rank and file, fights change as much as law enforcement. That time has to come to an end.

J.J. Hensley is a former police officer and former Special Agent with the U.S. Secret Service. He’s the award-winning author of the crime novels RESOLVE, MEASURE TWICE, CHALK'S OUTLINE, BOLT ACTION REMEDY, RECORD SCRATCH, FORGIVENESS DIES as well as several short stories and resides near Savannah, Georgia.