BiblioVault - Books about Police Procedural

Robert van Gulik

University of Chicago Press

The Chinese Bell Murders describes the Judge's exploits in the tribunal of Poo-yang early in his career. He has one case left over from his predecessor—the brutal rape-murder of Pure Jade, the daughter of Butcher Hsai who lived on Half Moon Street. Her lover has been accused and is on the verge of being convicted, but Judge Dee senses that all is not right and sets out with his lieutenants to find the real murderer.

"So scrupulously in the classic Chinese manner yet so nicely equipped with everything to satisfy the modern reader."—New York Times

Robert Van Gulik (1910-67) was a Dutch diplomat and an authority on Chinese history and culture. He drew his plots from the whole body of Chinese literature, especially from the popular detective novels that first appeared in the seventeenth century.

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Robert van Gulik

University of Chicago Press

Judge Dee and his four helpers solve the murders of an honored merchant, a kindly boxing master, and a paper merchant's wife, whose corpse has no head. They succeed in spite of strong pressure on Judge Dee from higher-ups to bring his investigation, which has temporarily generated unrest among the populace, rapidly to an end or face dismissal and serious punishment. The case of the headless corpse is based on a thirteenth-century Chinese casebook; the nail murder, one of the most famous motifs in Chinese crime literature, is first described in the same text.

"So scrupulously in the classic Chinese manner yet so nicely equipped with everything to satisfy the modern reader."—New York Times

Robert Van Gulik (1910-67) was a Dutch diplomat and an authority on Chinese history and culture. He drew his plots from the whole body of Chinese literature, especially from the popular detective novels that first appeared in the seventeenth century.

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Robert van Gulik

University of Chicago Press

The Chinese Lake Murders describes how Judge Dee solves three difficult cases in A.D. 666, shortly after he has been appointed magistrate of Han-yuan.

"[Robert van Gulik] deftly interweaves three criminal cases involving exotic yet universally recognizable characters, then has his Judge Dee provide a surprising yet most plausible solution."—New York Times Book Review

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Only the Names Have Been Changed

Dragnet, the Police Procedural, and Postwar Culture

Claudia Calhoun

University of Texas Press, 2022

2023 Peter C. Rollins Book Award, Northeast Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Associations (NEPCA)

In the postwar era, the police procedural series Dragnet informed Americans on the workings of the criminal justice system and instructed them in their responsibilities as citizens.

Among shifting politics, tastes, and technology in television history, one genre has been remarkably persistent: the cop show. Claudia Calhoun returns to Dragnet, the pioneering police procedural and an early transmedia franchise, appearing on radio in 1949, on TV and in film in the 1950s, and in later revivals. More than a popular entertainment, Dragnet was a signifier of America’s postwar confidence in government institutions—and a publicity vehicle for the Los Angeles Police Department.

Only the Names Have Been Changed shows how Dragnet’s “realistic” storytelling resonated across postwar culture. Calhoun traces Dragnet’s “semi-documentary” predecessors, and shows how Jack Webb, Dragnet’s creator, worked directly with the LAPD as he produced a series that would likewise inspire public trust by presenting day-to-day procedural justice, rather than shootouts and wild capers. Yet this realism also set aside the seething racial tensions of Los Angeles as it was. Dragnet emerges as a foundational text, one that taught audiences to see police as everyday heroes not only on TV but also in daily life, a lesson that has come under scrutiny as Americans increasingly seek to redefine the relationship between policing and public safety.

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The Police Procedural

George N. Dove

University of Wisconsin Press, 1982

In the late 1940s and early 1950s a new kind of detective story appeared on the scene. This was a story in which the mystery is solved by regular police detectives, usually working in teams and using ordinary police routines. This kind of narrative is customarily called the "police procedural" story. And it is the subject of this book. Though there has been numberless writers of these stories, there has never been a book of criticism before.

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