The police procedural is a sub-genre of the mystery story which tries to demonstrate the activities of a police force as they solve crimes. It can be difficult to distinguish between the police procedural and a detective novel in which the protagonist is a police officer. The principal distinction is that the police procedural attempts to demonstrate the activities of an entire squad or group of police officers, whereas a detective novel concentrates entirely on the activities of one police officer whose colleagues are, by and large, offstage. Another distinction that is frequently drawn is that the police procedural attempts to depict the work of police officers in solving multiple crimes simultaneously, whereas the detective novel concentrates on one crime. However, this distinction is less clear. Some novels that are quite clearly police procedurals concentrate on a single crime but show the efforts of multiple officers to solve it. By and large, in the procedural, the principal crimes are solved by the end of the story, although minor crimes may remain unsolved. One distinction that is nearly universal is that the procedural shows us the personal lives of the investigative team, whereas the detective novel generally does not. In a police procedural, as the name suggests, the process of arresting and convicting the perpetrators of the crime is often more important than the solution of a mystery. It is not uncommon for the perpetrator's identity to be known from the outset in a procedural.

Written stories

Ed McBain

Perhaps the best example of the police procedural is the work of Ed McBain, the pseudonym of Evan Hunter, who has written dozens of novels in the 87th Precinct series. New novels are still being written in this series (as of 2004). Although these novels focus primarily on Detective Steve Carella, they encompass the work of many officers working alone and in teams, and Detective Carella is not always present in any individual book. The 87th Precinct novels are works of great power and depth, and emotional richness, and often contain moments of terrific (if sometimes gruesome) humour.

Detective novel writers

It is difficult to disentangle the early roots of the procedural from its more common cousin, the detective novel featuring a police officer as protagonist. By and large, the better known novelists such as Ngaio Marsh produced work that falls more squarely into the province of the detective novel. Nevertheless, some of the work of authors less well known today, like Freeman Wills Crofts' novels about Inspector French or some of the work of the prolific team of G.D.H. and Margaret Cole, might be considered as the antecedents of today's procedural.

Del Shannon

A prolific author of police procedurals, whose work has fallen out of fashion in the years since her death, is Elizabeth Linington writing as "Dell Shannon". Ms. Linington, who wrote under her own name as well as a number of pseudonyms, reserved her Dell Shannon pseudonym primarily for procedurals featuring Detective Luis Mendoza (1960-1986). These novels are considered severely flawed by the author's far-right political viewpoint (she was a proud member of the John Birch Society), which occasionally works its way into the novels in the form of racism, sexism and extreme homophobia. However, they have a certain naive charm in their depiction of a kinder, gentler California, where the police were always "good guys" who solved all the crimes and respected the citizenry.

Georges Simenon

It is hard to say whether the Inspector Maigret novels of Georges Simenon represent procedurals because of their strong focus on the Inspector himself, but the cast of supporting characters frequently includes repeating members of his staff and some would argue that they qualify. Similarly, some critics suggest that the comic strip, Dick Tracy, is actually an early procedural, but this seems unlikely due to the strong focus on the protagonist.

TV series

In the 1990s, the police procedural was revitalized as a form by American (and sometimes British) television producers. This trend was perhaps begun by the success of an excellent and high-quality British series featuring Helen Mirren, whose half-dozen episodes in very long format are collectively known as Prime Suspect. However, the strong and lasting success of an American series called Law & Order contributed profoundly to the current (2004) spate of such programs. The trend has also cross-pollinated with another sub-genre of the mystery genre, the forensic pathology novel, producing large numbers of police procedurals in which forensic pathology plays a large part: principal among these is the CSI: Crime Scene Investigation franchise and its spin-offs.

Comic books

The rise of the police procedural in comic books can partly be attributed to the success of Kurt Busiek's groundbreaking 1994 series Marvels, and his subsequent Astro City work, both of which examine the typical superhero universe from the viewpoint of the common man who witnesses the great dramas from afar, participating in them tangentially at best. In the wake of Busiek's success, many other writers mimicked his approach, with mixed results – the narrative possibilities of someone who does not get involved in drama are limited. In 2000, however, Image Comics published the first issue of Brian Michael Bendis's comic Powers, which followed the lives of homicide detectives as they investigated superhero-related cases. Bendis's success has led both Marvel Comics and DC Comics to begin their own superhero-themed police procedurals (District X and Gotham Central, respectively), which focus on how the job of a police officer is affected by such tropes as secret identities, superhuman abilities, costumes, and the near-constant presence of vigilantes.

The future

Over the years and into the 21st century, the police procedural has grown and mutated to meet the changing tastes of readers and viewers. In its earliest years, the police were sterling and honourable; lately, the stories have been enlivened by the addition of concepts of moral doubt, and the corruptibility of one or another officer. As well, modern methods of detection now provide a considerably wider field for today's novelist/screenwriter to depict interesting and little-known day-to-day activities of the police. It seems reasonable to assume that the police procedural, as a form, will continue to rise and fall in popularity, but never disappear entirely.