I served for 30 years in the Metropolitan Police & was a career detective – all I ever wanted to be. Since retiring I still work in investigations interacting daily with cops across the South East (keeping my hand in as it were).
I was fortunate to have a career which I know has proved useful in advising writers in either knowing exactly how things happen in real life or how far from reality a story is for pragmatic or plot reasons?
In the truth stranger than fiction section there are 101 things that happened in real life that might leap out from a page or a T.V. screen - or develop a plot?
I spent many years working at places like Paddington & Notting Hill. All featured a mix of the most & least privileged – always the best places for a keen detective to work I thought? This provided my grounding in the day-to-day dealing with interviewing & charging prisoners for serious and not so serious crimes. As a result I spent many an hour faced by the more robust members of the Bar at Crown Court.
I worked at West End Central covering Mayfair to Soho & London’s vibrant gay night life & also the huge array of criminality that came from the world over to prey on those who lived, worked & played there. Many a strange tale arose! My career was split between the day to day and alternatively postings investigating serious and organised crime.
I worked with a number of outstanding detectives and not a few outstandingly corrupt ones! Someone once said The Met has some of the very best and some of the very worst – I agree, again some possible plot lines?
I dealt with informants throughout my career running them & supervising those who did - a source of some unlikely stories.
I served on many murder investigations over many years and finished my time as head of the Met’s Flying Squad sadly (for some) it has evolved from the days of Reagan & Carter to an outstandingly professional team of detectives who daily face the challenge of facing and carrying firearms - all great experience for your crime based thriller?
I was trained in surveillance, carried a gun for a while and was a hostage & crisis negotiator for over 10 years. Talking suicidal people off high buildings or directing people whose loved ones had been kidnapped whilst they negotiated with kidnappers.
I’ve deployed as a hostage negotiator everywhere from Moldova to Jamaica with a lot of stops at Hackney & Lewisham in between.
