It wasn’t COPS

My essay at Storytellers Unplugged went up today. It’s about doing research for writing, and was inspired by my ride-along experience on Saturday, though the ride-along itself features in the article not so much.

I would estimate the producers of COPS must film, oh, 1000 hours to get a 30 minute program chock full of exciting criminal hijinx. We spent 8 hours touring the mean streets of Houston and the most exciting encounters were a traffic stop that led to an arrest because of outstanding warrants and a report of a 13-year-old wielding a lighter in the presence of a couple of small children. We responded to a lot of calls, but many of them either turned out to be nothing or were handled in a few moments. One of the funniest events: we were out on tour and a call came over the radio from dispatch saying that there was a guy out in the police department parking lot whaling away at a squad car with a pipe or a baseball bat. It took a few minutes for a cruiser to get on-site. You’d think that would be the last place you’d want to get up to criminal mischief, at Central Command.

However, the experience gave me a great deal of insight into the workings of the officer’s daily life. A lot of time on-shift is spent writing up reports on ancient systems. The police computer runs Windows 95, but the report-writing software is DOS-based. If you don’t know what either of those things are, just let me say they’re old. Very old. The officer who was assigned to me was very friendly and conversational, explained everything that was going on as it was happening, and went out of his way to pick calls that might be more interesting or involved. I have pages and pages of notes and several hours of digital audio recordings, all of which will, I hope, assist me when it comes time to write my short story.

I’m nearing the end of the audio version of David Morrell’s Creepers. I read the book in ARC, but someone on rec.arts.mystery was giving away a copy of the audio so I snarfed it up. Eight hours long, it’s only taken me three weeks to get this far. My short commute to work doesn’t allow much listening time. Over the weekend I read the last 87^th Precinct novel by Ed McBain (Fiddlers), which was par for the series, though the ending seemed to be closing some doors and opening others and it’s sad to think they’ll always remain thus. I also read “Keller’s Adjustment,” Lawrence Block’s novella in Transgressions. I only have two stories left in that anthology.

My next book will probably be the new John Berendt (author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil). It’s about the Venice opera house fire and I’ve heard good things about it, especially while I was lurking around Murder By The Book in downtown Houston this weekend. I don’t get into the city very often, and I almost always try to make it to MBTB when I do. I only bought one book, a collection of newspaper articles by Michael Connelly. It’s called Crime Beat: Selected Journalism and is a limited (5000-copy) release. MBTM had signed copies, so I couldn’t resist.

The only time I watch baseball is during the post-season. This year the Astros are in really good shape to make it to the World Series, ahead of the Cardinals 3-1. All they have to do is win one of the next three games and they’ll face the Chicago White Sox. Last night’s game was a nail biter. Only a one-run differential and the Cards started a comeback in the ninth. The double play that ended the game was spectacular. Just about the only thing that could have saved the situation.