Today, half a century after Raymond Chandler wrote The Long Goodbye, twenty-four hours a day somebody is still running in Los Angeles.
I take back my simplified calculations and instead focus on this post. Hahaha.
This week I braved the crime-laden streets of Los Angeles; read about real-life detectives and the handful of murders they encountered in one year of their careers. I have never heard of Miles Corwin before (then again, I have not heard of a lot of non-fiction authors). I mean, this is just one of those books I bought to spend some of my idle, waiting time in court for the next hearing. I did not expect it to grab me by the throat and hurtle me to the dark side of the human psyche or something similar to that.
The title alone is a dead giveaway (pardon the pun) but it does not portray how deeply moving the crimes and stories are stitched together in this book. While it's a book about crimes basically, it is inherently the stories of the men who made it their mission to catch criminals.
Men, yes. The detectives featured here are all men. And it's quite a treat to peek into their lives: their different backgrounds, how they became cops, how they take a break from the crimes they encounter daily and so forth. On a personal note, given that I was raised practically watching and reading whodunits, I would've liked some women detectives featured as well.
Chapters are divided into certain parts of Los Angeles, where the jurisdiction of the LAPD lies. A certain crime becomes the starting point of everything: a dead prostitute found in her apartment, a mother and child in an apparent suicide, a wrongly-misplaced folder opening up a cold case, the murder of a has-been actor's wife, and more. Crimes like murder are always gruesome. Murder is never a pretty sight and it can be a bit uncomfortable reading about it. It is one thing reading fiction and another reading about an actual murder of an actual woman killed in her own apartment, left for dead for two or so days, with no witnesses and no one even hearing a gunshot. Personal vulnerability comes into play. Victims who had friends and relatives who carry on and try to make sense of the violence. You put yourself in the victim's place and think "This could very well happen to me." It is a kind of morbid thinking I cannot escape, reading true crime stories.
The detectives featured here are just plain dedicated. Tried and tested, so to speak. I have no idea if any of them are still in active duty since the book, rather the research was done in 2001. But I truly felt for them; when they get stumped yet hopeful that pieces of evidence will show up or fall into place somehow, learned from the tips and tricks they employ to hook a confession or when investigations lead them to different possibilities, or, as in a couple of cases, managed to solve a crime after tireless work. I also appreciated the humanizing factor: the detectives' other lives - who they are outside their office. Reading up on their varied backgrounds made me smile at times (one of the detectives wanted to be a fashion photographer, one of them trained and became a sous chef). It's the side we rarely see but often imagine.
It's a good read and yet, given the time frame for the entire research (one year), most of the cases mentioned in the book are still undergoing investigation and/or trial. I had to Google the ruling on one case even and found myself shocked at the result.
Here's an excerpt, on how a criminalist see their tv counterparts:
"I was watching CSI the other night and laughed my head off," the photographer tells the detectives. "They picked up a dead baby and didn't even look for trace evidence. There was no coroner around, no photos, no nothing. Then they barge in on the detectives, push them aside, and interview the witnesses. On another show, they picked up hairs with tweezers. Obviously, you use gloves so you don't damage the hair. One detective told me it was so bad he wanted to shoot his TV."Life not imitating art.
-----
Homicide Special: A Year with the LAPD's Elite Detective Unit by Miles Corwin




