So, when I was introduced to Steven Gore, I was very excited to meet Harlan Donnally, an ex SFPD detective. I will post my review of his first two Harlan Donnally mysteries, Act of Deceit and A Criminal Defense at a later date.
Here are his thoughts on writing crime fiction...
"Counterintuitive.
If there is single word
that characterizes my encounter with writing crime fiction after decades as a
criminal investigator, it’s counterintuitive.
And it’s part of the
explanation why true crime makes for lousy crime fiction, why so few career-long
law enforcement officers and private investigators succeed in crime writing and
why most of those who do have only worked in the field briefly. In truth, much
of what readers want from investigator protagonists are characteristics and
habits that experienced investigators have to train out of themselves and train
out of young investigators in order for them to succeed.
Readers want different
things from investigators than do law enforcement agencies and private
investigator clients. Readers want to feel increasing tension, while, with the
rarest of exceptions, experienced investigators aim to lower it; readers want
to watch investigators overcome obstacles, while experienced investigators aim
to avoid them; readers want to read about characters who are uniquely
qualified, while in the real world there are only investigators who are
especially qualified; readers want to watch investigators run up against walls
and then force their way through them, while experienced investigators aim how
to slip around them; readers want spontaneity and surprise, while experienced
investigators plan and plan in order to limit surprises; readers want to see
investigators try and try again, while clients want real investigators to get
it right the first time; readers are not troubled by brash, aggressive
protagonists injecting conflict into a scene, while real investigators don’t
inject it, they anticipate potential conflict inherent in a situation and work
to mute it.
In the end, in the real
world, doing all these things in these ways is both the criteria of competence
and the conditions for successful investigations.
There is one kind of law
enforcement that matches readers’ expectations: narcotics. But it isn’t at
heart a crime solving assignment. Narcotics cases are generally built from
leaning on people who’ve already been caught dirty—by patrol officers and
street drug task forces and through search warrants and wiretaps--to give up
those above them. It’s less about solving crimes and more about discovering
crimes already in progress or creating crimes by means of informants or
undercover agents. The problem is that since the skills and attitudes that
succeed in narcotics enforcement fail in investigations, few narcotics officers
become first rate homicide detectives. Observe the contrast between the drug
enforcement reality shows and A&E’s The
First 48. In The First 48, at least
during the first few years of the show and before detectives began to play to
the camera, nearly all of the excitement came from the music and the jump cuts.
The detectives themselves were generally low key and methodical.
The problem for me was
to translate the reality of investigation into fiction. That is to say, there
could be no “When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his
hand” of Raymond Chandler or “My way of learning is to heave a wild and
unpredictable monkey-wrench into the machinery” of Dashiell Hammett. Rather,
plots had to be driven internally and conflict had to be exploited from within,
rather than imposed from without and the methods used had to be those that
succeeded in real life.
On the domestic front,
I’m making this effort in the Harlan Donnally novels of which A Criminal Defense is the latest, and on
the international front, in the Graham Gage thrillers of which Power Blind is the latest. In each
series, the central problem I faced was investigative competence: the
protagonists had to apply real world methods and approaches in a realistic way.
That meant applying the techniques of genre fiction to stories whose aim is
realism. And the challenge was to make the stories not only informative about
the real world of crime and investigation, but exciting for readers. In the
end, it’s the readers who will judge whether I have truly bridged the gap
between the real and the fictional."
Stunned to learn that her killer was never prosecuted, Donnally soon finds himself in battle against a broken
justice system and on a trail of evil into a dangerous borderland in which the falsely pious and the wealthy abuse the young and the poor. And though each step takes him farther down a perilous path that wrenches him between his inner demons and his mission to redeem a brother's love, he won't stop until he knows the truth.
For Donnally made a promise to a dead man, and he'll keep it—or die trying.
A Criminal Defense...from the author's website...What do you call a criminal defense attorney hanging by his neck? When he's Mark Hamlin, every cop in San Francisco calls it justice.
Over three decades, Hamlin's practice devolved into just another racket: intimidating witnesses, suborning perjury, destroying evidence, laundering money. But is he the victim of murder—or of a dangerous sexual encounter gone wrong? And when law enforcement believes justice has already been done, who can be trusted to find out?
Once again in the city where his career came to a shattering end, former detective Harlan Donnally resolved it wouldn't be him. He had no desire to immerse himself in the deceit that was Hamlin's career . . . nor entangle himself in the corrupted loyalties that turned the dead lawyer's associates into both co-conspirators and suspects . . . nor make himself the proxy for the hatreds and betrayals Hamlin left behind.
But the presiding judge demanded otherwise—and that might cost Donnally his life..
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