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The Police Procedural In Ed Mcbain's Cop Hater

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The police procedural is a recent addition to detective fiction. This is because “[b]efore the 1980s the police novel was a minor, and somewhat maligned, stepchild in the field of crime fiction.”[5] As one of the early police procedural novels, Ed McBain’s Cop Hater was a factor in how detective fiction came to embrace the police procedural. In doing so, it had to deal with the attitudes that caused cop characters to be considered unsuitable protagonists. This process was facilitated by efforts to make the police characters relatable, and the procedural methods they use accessible. In doing so, McBain wrote a novel that paved the way for acceptance of the police detective.
The early detective novels were very much against the police. As was claimed within Cop Hater, “a cop is a symbol of law and order”, which should make the police detective the most natural choice to be the detective. Yet in the earlier eras of detective fiction, the detectives typically worked outside of the law. Historically, the police were not publicly seen as a group which were competent enough to be trusted to deal with these matters. This may have been justified in context, given that the early constables mostly worked with the information others gave them, rather than seeking it themselves [6]. The early detectives were romanticised, often as geniuses, for working outside this seemingly corrupt system [1]. The issue of public opinion has lingered for the modern police novel to address. The

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