…one of the coolest things to do on a Sunday afternoon is listen to someone talk about blood and gore and when a real forensic practitioner talks, well… April’s Murder We Write meeting brought in Senior Forensic practitioner Joanne Morrissey, who served with the Metropolitan Police Service in London for 17 years and is now in her 4th year with the High Point Police Department. She had an amazing power point presentation, but not only that, she had great war stories, old crimes, weird crimes and yucky crimes.
I have three pages of notes. With a master’s degree from university in UK in Fire Investigation [this side of the pond we call it Fire Science] Jo was full of information about certification, evidence procedures, documentation and scene preservation. And, as I know from Lee Lofland nobody on TV does it well, or right, maybe close, but then only maybe. Bottom line, Castle does most of it wrong. NCIS and The Closer did more of it right. But still. You don’t solve a crime in an hour.
The trick of it is whether or not you can make it close enough to believable so that people are willing to over look the odd or weird or uncertain device you chose to use to solve the crime. With Castle, you over look a LOT because of the Richard Castle , not because the mystery is better or worse than anyone else’s. With The Closer you watch because you want to find how Brenda Leigh is going to screw up everyone else’s life to solve her crime. With NCIS it’s more a combination of the two, you watch to see the characters interact and to find out whodunit.
So. Now I have to rewrite or rethink the scene where the dead body is found. Do I let the local police mess up the crime scene making it tough for the main character? OR, do I have the CSI come in and make things more difficult for my main character? hmmm……