Police Procedure & Investigation
A Guide for Writers
By Lee Lofland; Foreword by Stuart Kaminsky
368 pp., Paperback $19.99 U.S./$24.99 CAN.
ISBN-13: 978-1-58297-455-2
Writer’s Digest Books — August 2007
www.Amazon.com

Pull over, step away from your vehicle, and approach your nearest book dealer. Police Procedure & Investigation: A Guide for Writers, by former homicide detective Lee Lofland, is the final word on this often-botched subject.

Much of quality fiction is in actual details and Police Procedure has them right down to an officer’s patent leather shoes. No kidding. There is actually a section on officer apparel and how it can affect law enforcement. As for the heavy-hitting content, Procedure discusses with absolute authenticity—among many other things—arrest and search procedures, crime scene investigation, fingerprinting, and the courts and the legal process. Do you want to know more about police codes? In there. Prisons? Drugs? Police academy? Internal affairs? Need a handy glossary on how to understand the fuzz? Want to know how flies can corrupt bloodstains? — all laid out meticulously in Procedure. Or maybe you need to brush up on Spiral Search Patterns, Block Search Patterns, and Strip Search Patterns? Not a problem. Just cruise over to Chapter 7 and sweep the area. Procedure is like having your own Homicide and DA squad on duty and at the ready 24-7.

For the queasy, take a nausea remedy and swipe peanut butter under your nose before the autopsy chapter because what you are about to read and see about the autopsy process is the real McCoy. (That’s right, peanut butter. Real veterans on the job smear peanut butter under their nose in order to help shroud the smell of decaying corpses.) None of the autopsy chapter is gratuitous, however. Lofland opens with an excellent history of the autopsy that would satisfy even the most exacting historical novelist.

Finally, did you ever wonder how suspense authors like Jeffrey Deaver, Lee Goldberg, and Jan Burke get this police procedure stuff right? Well, the secret is out — they get on the horn to book and TV consultant Lee Lofland.

Police Procedure & Investigation is the tour-de-force police procedural guide for aspiring and established authors and ought to be a staple in every law school library. A big 10-4 loud and clear.

—Andrew McAleer, Boston Mystery Review

Prime Time
By Hank Phillippi Ryan
276 pp, Paperback $5.50 U.S./$6.50 CAN.
ISBN: 13: 978-0-373-88135-2
Harlequin — June 2007
www.Amazon.com

Hank Phillippi Ryan’s debut novel Prime Time is out and on the case! Could annoying e-mail spam really lead to a scoop about murder, multimillion-dollar fraud, and double cross? One thing is for certain, nothing is going to stop Boston’s very own TV 3 investigative reporter Charlotte “Charlie” McNally from lacing up her track shoes to see what she can uncover. But as she begins to unravel the scandal-laden e-mails she confronts road block after road block including bent-nosed threats, a breakneck car chase, bottom line bosses, and a new man in her life Josh Gelston, who for some reason, just can’t be trusted—or can he? McNally is a pen-to-the-grindstone reporter with a nose for news, but not always men — except for the ever-faithful Franklin Parrish. Parrish, McNally’s fearless producer is ever ready to thwart bad guys and the powers-that-be who are determined to see McNally “fade out” from the screen. Sometimes, however, to McNally’s playful chagrin, Parrish is a bit too willing to offer his male spin on the modern dating scene.

Prime Time is a suspenseful, humorous, and cyber-hip mystery that gives readers an authentic, full-Monte view of the high-stakes world of television journalism. I felt like I was spreading shoe leather alongside a seasoned investigative reporter and indeed I was. Ryan’s wonderful sidebars about What they didn’t teach you in journalism school . . . don’t print that!—I mean J-school—are not only enjoyable, but insightful enough to make Prime Time required reading for any aspiring journalist. And as for what the reader learns about romance? It ought to be required reading for all men, too! A delightful take-you-away read.

—Andrew McAleer, Boston Mystery Review

LAndmarked for Murder
Editors: Harley Jane Kozak, Michael Mallory, Nathan Walpow
Featured authors: Gay Ann Degani, G. B. Pool, Darrell James, Dee Ann Palmer, Paul D. Marks, Kate Thornton, Jinx Beers, Pamela Samuels-Young, Arthur Coburn, and A. H. Ream.
$14.95
ISBN: 0-9666366-37-2
Top Publishers

LAndmarked for Murder is a collection of mystery stories set in and around various Los Angeles landmarks, hence the title. The landmarks range from Tommy Trojan at USC, to the Venice Canals, Cal Tech and Sleepy Lagoon, infamous for sparking the Zoot Suit riots of the 1940s. And while the landmarks provide interesting backdrops, the real essence of these stories are the characters and how they deal with their dilemmas.

Standouts include "Setup," by Pamela Samuels-Young, about a black attorney defending a white cop in these highly charged times. Nobody's faultless in this story where nothing is really what it seems. Arthur Coburn's "Some Creature I Care About" is a quirky story about a man, his animal trainer girlfriend and the bum living next door...  "Leaving Slackerland," is Gay Degani's story of Nikki, a woman living on the fringe and her shady ex-boyfriend. Nikki is someone who wants to put all of this behind her, but first has to remain out of the line of fire. The story is as much about Nikki's growing up as it is about solving a murder. And Paul D. Marks' "Sleepy Lagoon Nocturne" takes us back to the era of Zoot Suits and World War II, with his recurring character jazz pianist Bobby Saxon. Bobby has more on his mind than just a beautiful woman in a mysterious photograph and simply solving the case of a missing person. But the real mystery here is what makes Bobby tick.  Overall a very fine collection and something for everyone and every taste.

—Andrew McAleer, Boston Mystery Review