Authenticity Part Two - Being a Journalist

I write crime drama but I don’t write police procedurals. I’ve never been a police officer, so I have no idea how to work a crime scene, bag evidence or interview suspects. If I wrote police procedurals I would just be repeating what other authors had written about what it’s like to solve a crime as a police officer and then my books would sound like too many others.

However, I have been a journalist working on a local newspaper in the New Forest. That’s where I began my career before moving to London and working on the national newspapers. I’ve lived that life and know the important role a local newspaper plays in a community and the unique position the journalists hold who work on those local newspapers.

People can be quite excited about talking to a journalist and getting themselves into a paper, and are often very happy to chat. In fact, they can be more willing to speak to a reporter than they would a police officer. If you’re experienced and you know what questions to ask to move the conversation along or when to keep quiet and let the interviewee fill the gaps, then you can find out all sorts of information which might not be available to the police officers on the case. Journalists working on a story may have much more time for research and to dig deeply to uncover what lies beneath an issue which on the surface looks very simple and clear cut. It’s this mandate to properly focus on the story which gives journalists a unique ability to find out what’s really going on.

I think this perspective is a different way of approaching a crime drama and I hope that element of realism, based on my real life experience, shines through in my books and makes them an even more interesting and captivating read.