I’m the author of six Sunday Times bestselling crime novels. I’m also a former police officer who spent time as a detective before specialising as a public order commander and operations inspector. You might expect me to be a stickler for accuracy, but I’m going to let you into a little secret: I don’t think accuracy matters. In fact, I’ll go further than that and say that accuracy is often incompatible with crime fiction.
Although every real-life crime is important to the victims, the majority of criminal investigations are pedestrian, even boring. Real-life criminals are, for the most part, of average or below-average intelligence, not the Machiavellian moustachetwirling mastermind villains we like to read about or watch in films. If we crime-writers based our books on the average case dealt with by a real detective, we’d lose readers fast.
Let’s think what that real detective is doing. Are they pounding the streets, banging on doors and chasing down baddies? Are they slipping into seedy basement bars, knocking back whiskies while they pump the barman for information?
