There are times, however, when knowing how cop work is really done gets in the way of a good plot. Obviously I don't include the boring hours of paperwork, or the mundane "just the facts, Ma'a'm," when trying to cull information from witnesses. That's a given. It's more that police procedure is bound by rules and regulations, whether from the penal code or the department code, and I must admit that spinning a good story around those rules and regs can be stifling.

So what's a good cop do? Unlike my real-life police reports, in fiction I can bend those rules a tad to fit with a plot. Need to enter a building without a search warrant? Not a problem, because I can write in exigent circumstances to fit my needs. Need to skirt departmental rules to solve a case, especially the rules that'll get you fired? (Like when you're ordered off a case, but your motivation to find the murderer outweighs your lieutenant's warnings, and you run off to another country in search of the killer, because it's a way-cooler plot?) Again, not a problem. In real life? A whole different matter — especially in this economy — I do have a house payment to make.

Of course, there are those cases and incidents that just scream to be written into a book. Only problem is trying to get them to fit into your plot. If it's not the cases, then it's the people. I can't tell you how many times I have run into someone while working a case, and knew this person had to become a character in my book. (Not that anyone would recognize him or her.) Real cases are a bit different. I don't write about actual cases, but I might take parts from one, combined with another, then add a twist of my own. I won't even go into the cases that are so convoluted that if I tried to write about them, the editor would toss it back and say it was too unbelievable. And she's probably right. But that's what juries are for.

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