Cops. Good ones, bad ones, corrupt ones, ones with hunches, ones that fight the system, ones that drink, ones that have unhappy home lives, ones that have an unsolved case haunting them. They come in all varieties in crime fiction – though sadly for the most part they are still all men – and apart from solving the case in hand they have to entertain us en route. Their foibles are part of the deal. The cop who listens to classical music, who spends half his hours drinking real ale in a cosy pub, the cop who reads philosophy in his spare time. Every cop needs a gimmick.
Unlike the private eyes and Sherlock Holmes-type geniuses, most cops have two battles to fight. The battle to catch the criminal and the battle within their own force. It’s not often a cop in fiction happily rubs along with his boss and co-workers. Dealing with the hierarchies and complications of station life is often as important a part of the story as finding out the butler did it.
