my piece from LitHub about Dirty Cops in fiction....
Everybody loves to hate a dirty cop. The
idea of the corrupt or lazy policeman is a very old trope indeed - two thousand
years ago Seneca was complaining about dishonest Tribunes and cohortes
urbanae. Edgar Allan Poe and Fergus Hume both have choice words for
indolent and/or stupid policemen. Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes was not
always impressed by the dedication and reliability of the Metropolitan Police.
Don
Winslow’s summer hit The Force has focused renewed interest in a genre
that I love. If you’re interested in stories of sleazy, venial, even murderous
policemen (and, occasionally women) then you are in a luck as I’ve compiled a
little primer for you of my top 10 dirty cop novels.
10. A Scanner Darkly – Philip K
Dick. The weirdest novel on my list but also one of the best. Set in a
dystopian Orange County (as opposed to a utopian Orange County?) Bob Arctor is
an undercover police agent who is sent to spy on himself. Paranoia ensues.
9. 11th Hour - Maxine Paetro &
James Patterson. When millionaire Chaz Smith is killed the very pregnant
Detective Lindsay Boxer discovers that the murder weapon is linked to the
killings of four San Francisco mobsters and that it was taken from her own department's
evidence locker. Boxer puts her life and reputation on the life to solve the
case.
8. 1977 – David Peace. Exhausted
policeman Bob Fraser and burnt-out journalist Jack Whitehead investigate the
Yorkshire Ripper case and discover that the West Yorkshire Police Force is a
cesspit of corruption, bigotry, languor, racism, darkness and incompetence. Not
exactly a lighthearted cozy from the incomparable Mr Peace.
7. Heavens May Fall – Unity Dow.
Naledi Chaba is a feisty lawyer at a non-governmental organization that assists
children in need in Mochudi, Botswana. She discovers institutional corruption
on a societal scale when a young girl’s claims of rape are not taken seriously
by the police or the judiciary.
6. The Given Day – Dennis Lehane.
Lehane’s classic about the famous 1919 Boston Police Strike. Aiden
"Danny" Coughlin is an Irish patrolman reluctantly sucked into going
against the brass of his own department by the hardtimes of his brother
officers. Luther Laurence is a black man on the run in a city where racism is
as rife as any city in the American South. Bomb toting anarchists, destitute
immigrants, corrupt ward bosses and cops on the take clash in the climactic
revolutionary year of 1919.
5. Hard Revolution – George
Pelecanos. Derek Strange, a black rookie police officer joins the Washington DC
police department in 1968 just as the city is about to plunge into chaos and
revolt following the assassination of Martin Luther King. Racism, the old boy
network and corruption are Strange’s unenviable lot on his first weeks and
months on the job. For another look at race and the terrible events of 1968
from a master of the PI novel (not quite in my purview here) try the always
brilliant Walter Mosley’s Charcoal Joe.
4. The Cold Six Thousand – James
Ellroy. This was a tough call. If you’re only going to have one James Ellroy on
your list how can you not pick LA Confidential especially with the evil
Dudley Smith lurking like a bloated spider at the center of a web of depravity?
Well, for me The Cold Six Thousand is LA Confidential taken to
the next level. The whole society is dirty here. From the President and the FBI
director on down to CIA goon Pete Bondurant to beleaguered ex G man trying to
do the right thing Ward Littell to Wayne Tedrow, Jr. a Vegas PD cop looking for
the pimp who raped and murdered his wife. The Cold Six Thousand is
America as a vile, unreasoning irredeemable dystopia. What’s not to love?
3. The Choirboys – Joseph Wambaugh.
Everybody’s already read The Choirboys haven’t they? This is the classic
novel of police corruption from the man who, with Ed McBain, virtually
reinvented the modern American cop novel. Several young officers of the
Wilshire Division learn quickly how things are really done in the endemically
crooked Los Angeles Police Department.
2. The Force – Don Winslow. What
Wambaugh and Ellroy do for LAPD Winslow does for the NYPD. There have many
great dirty New York cop novels (Richard Price for one has performed sterling
work in this arena) but Winslow has really done something special here by
embracing police corruption as the raison d’etre of an entire segment of
the police. Detective Sergeant Dennis Malone leads the Manhattan North Special
Task Force, an elite unit established to combat drug gangs, organized crime and
gun running. Years of undercover work and dirty deals have compromised Malone
and his cohorts so that by the beginning of the book they are a well oiled
thieving machine. Unfortunately for Malone the feds and Internal Affairs are
looking for a sacrificial lamb to appease the punters and from then on the book
is cop versus cop, cop versus DA, cop versus FBI – pretty much everything
except cop versus criminals. A masterpiece of the genre.
1. The
Killer Inside Me – Jim Thompson. The original and best sociopathic,
sadistic, sexually depraved, serial killing, scary dirty cop. Lou Ford is an
intelligent, cynical, chronically bored small town Texas deputy sheriff who
uses his power to murder and pervert justice with impunity in post war Jim Crow
Texas. This and Pop. 1280 (about another corrupt Texas sheriff) are the
high watermarks of Thompson’s under appreciated genius.
