Anybody writing a mystery/crime/police procedural books or series?

[ruby199]

I'm new at myst/crime/pol proceed writing. Right now, I'm trying to match crimes and establish the timeline and the subplot events for books 3 through 12. I've got the endings done for many of the books, but I'm desperately trying to avoid having similar crimes for the books. The big choke on picking the crimes is that this is a K-9 mystery series and, of course, the crimes have to provide a reason for the protag to let her dogs out on the search. She also does HRD -- the first book involved that. Anyway, sorry if I'm rambling or sharing inappropriately.

 

[pmmg]

By done, to you mean you have them written out? or just figured out?

Given that my life has been filled with serial watching of crimes shows, most of which involve murder, it would seem you can do quite a lot of mysteries without making them all the same. I've never pursued crime fiction in my own writing, but I think the draw to it is either following the investigation and seeing how each clue leads to the next, or following the bad guy, knowing the end, and wondering how long till he gets tripped up. What works well is having some odd clue that seems not to matter early, come to matter more later, or having some twist at the end where it is not what we were believing all along.

K9 would always have a reason to be on site if there was evidence to find, a trail to follow, drugs involved, a cadaver, or the police officer just likes letting his dog out of the car. Dogs do kind of lend themselves to it smelled what others could not see, so I would think you would need reasons why strange odors might be present that are not what people think, or are those that go unidentified only to be identified later in the story.

Did you have any specific questions?

 

[Devor]

I'm going to ramble myself for a moment. I was on a train with my kids from NJ to NC, and the second I got on the train I threw up. I, err, proceeded to do so again, repeatedly, until they tossed us off the train in Philadelphia. It was a weird trip. They had the K-9 unit there to sniff me for drugs (of course there were none). But since you mention crimes and whatnot, it'd be kind of interesting to have someone die from an overdose (that was really a murder) a few minutes after being thrown off the train, thrusting your K-9 unit into a case that on surface you'd have very little business getting involved with. Little evidence, lots of jurisdiction issues, room for mystery.

What is HRD?

 

[pmmg]

HRD = High Risk Deployment.... um....I think.