Researching police procedure and crime scenes for crime novels

So where do I get the police procedural information from and how can writers obtain this kind of information?

When I first created the enigmatic, flawed and rugged DI Andy Horton in TIDE OF DEATH I approached Hampshire Police (the county in which my novels are set) and asked if I could visit the police station and talk to some police officers in CID and in what was then called the Vice Squad. Hampshire Police were brilliant. They let me visit them twice even though I wasn't then published. That gave me some basic background which I have since built on and now I know many police officers and those in civilian jobs attached to the police service. I'm grateful to Hampshire Police and forensic experts for their help and patience and for being so generous in giving me their time.
There are also courses for writers run by serving police officers and ex-coppers, the Crime Writers' Association, of which I am a member, have a very useful website called the Crime Readers Association for crime fiction fans along with useful blogs, articles and information for budding crime writers.

Of course my crime novels cannot truly reflect real police procedure because if they did they would end up reading like a police manual and bore everyone to tears. So the basics are then spiced up and tweaked by my imagination.

One of the problems with writing contemporary crime novels though is that the police service in the UK is continually being re-organized by the government which means that no sooner do I mention a department than its name changes or it merges with another. It is not possible to be a hundred percent correct on this but they were correct at the time of writing.

There are advantages in writing an historical crime novel, my first set in 1950 is due to be published this autumn (2019) and features a Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Alun Ryga, who is sent to the coast to investigate a complex murder in DEATH IN THE COVE. In an historical crime novel I don't have to wrestle with the fact that the names of the police departments change, also the red tape that today surrounds serving police officers was practically non existent. The challenge though is to get what procedure there was correct and to incorporate that and the way of thinking and investigating into the novel to ensure it is an entertaining and intriguing read. I hope I have done so.

DEAD PASSAGE (DI Andy Horton 14) published October 2019. Available in paperback, as an ebook, on Amazon Kindle and Kobo

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This article has been updated since it was published in 2014 and 2017