Changing the Dynamics of Small Town Cops: Guest post by Laura Belgrave

This article originally appeared in the Mystery Readers Journal (Volume 32:3): Small Town Cops 1. 

Laura Belgrave is the author of the Claudia Hershey mystery series. Her website is at www.laurabelgrave.com. Her books, in ebook format and trade paperback, are available on Amazon and elsewhere. The fourth in the series is in the works now. 

LAURA BELGRAVE:
Changing the Dynamics of Small Town Cops With One Experienced Detective

With regularity I’m asked why I set my Claudia Hershey police procedurals in a small Florida town and then thrust a big-city veteran homicide detective from Cleveland, Ohio into the tiny police department there. It’s always been an easy answer for me: Small towns harbor secrets.

Secondary to that? As much as I enjoy mysteries set in the glittery coastal areas of Florida—or other large, high-profile cities throughout the United States—after a while those novels have a sameness and predictability to them. Big city cop shops have the resources they need. They generally have well-trained police officers, not to mention protocols and procedures that are actually written down.

I wanted something different. Thus was born the town of Indian Run, a town with some 8,000 residents situated in Central Florida. Indian Run is all about cattle, citrus, fishing lakes, a small community of psychics and mediums, and people suspicious of outsiders. In theory, in Indian Run nothing much happens beyond bar fights. Of course, nothing stands still forever, so through the course of my mysteries—In The Spirit of Murder, Quietly Dead and Deadly Associations—the town itself goes through some changes as developers discover a cheaper place to build communities that appeal to retirees willing to forfeit coastal breezes for pleasant, but low-cost homes. The town council likes that, too.

With the arrival of Detective Lieutenant Claudia Hershey, a hire grudgingly made by the town’s cantankerous police chief to appease increasingly progressive people on the town’s council, other kinds of changes occur in Indian Run. The changes weren’t what the chief expected. But see, the thing about Hershey? She understands why everything that might appear to be an accidental death actually isn’t. She actually recognizes poor police procedure. She quickly learns that a small town is the perfect place to conceal crime and get away with it. That’s because in Indian Run no one looks too hard. So yeah, her arrival changes things up and none of it makes the 6-foot detective popular in a “good old boy” police department.

On the other hand, the blunt-speaking Hershey didn’t move to Indian Run to be popular. She moved there to get away from an endless flow of murders and the subsequent brutal work hours that kept her from being the mother she wanted to be to her 14-year-old daughter. Leaving, she thought, was worth a fat pay cut. But what she brought to Indian Run in investigative experience, she lacked in understanding the criminal kinship small towns actually do share in common with big cities. Murder, in the end, is still murder, even if it might look different without the bright lights, huge population and always-on atmosphere of a big city.

Hershey also failed to imagine that horseflies big enough to saddle and ride, alligators, and the persistent scent of cattle would be a regular part of her life. She certainly didn’t anticipate that hand-to-hand combat in that kind of environment would occur. Her bad.

Now don’t think for a minute that all small towns are made up. In fact, in Florida, there exists a Panhandle city called Carrabelle. It’s a 1,300-resident fishing community with a police chief, deputy chief, three officers and two part-time officers. It didn’t start with a police station. It started with an enclosed phone affixed to the side of a building. That’s where officers received and made calls. Much to the consternation of the city fathers, cunning visitors routinely used it to make long-distance phone calls, so the police “department” was eventually turned into a phone booth. That didn’t help much and today, the city has a small building. (But if no one answers the non-emergency phone number, you’re to call the Franklin County Sheriff’s Department so you can leave a message.)

No, Carrabelle doesn’t have the intriguing crimes that Claudia faces. Nor, to my knowledge, has any officer ever been stuck with the chief’s nephew Booey for a pretend internship because, well, the chief has to pay off his brother and this is one way to make the debt good. Then again, because readers do influence writers, young Booey makes a return visit in Deadly Associations, third in the series, because readers wanted more of the excitable young man with the fire-red hair. Indeed, with Booey on stage you might make the mistake that the Claudia Hershey mystery novels are cozies. They most decidedly are not.

For me, no matter where they occur, the best mysteries are driven by rich characters who stay true to their nature, solid pacing and obsessively-researched plots that don’t duplicate what already has been written. Small towns with their quirky natures make that possible. Truth be told? For me, small towns make it too compelling not to use them as a setting.

As for Claudia, she is this:

Tall and thin and sharp of elbow, Claudia was neither beautiful nor plain. Her face mercifully lacked the sharp geometry of her body, but it was dwarfed by oversized glasses that gave her eyes an unsettling depth and authority. Those who met her stare pulled away first, shrinking from the penetrating orbs that were sea green in color, the right marginally smaller than the left. 

Indeed, back in the days when Claudia’s daughter Robin still spoke to her in a civil manner, she liked to joke that people could walk on her mother’s line of vision. 

Claudia recognized the power her eyes held, just as she recognized the prerogative of her height. Six feet spoke its own language. 

Put that kind of person into a small town police department? You don’t get a slacker. You get someone who won’t look the other way because it’s easier. Claudia brings her best game, the only one she knows how to bring as a top-drawer investigator. And one day, the police chief might actually like her. In fact, it would appear he’s grudgingly beginning to do that—or at least admire her.

If It Can Happen, It’ll Likely Happen in Florida First: Laura Belgrave

The most recent issue of Mystery Readers Journal focused on Florida Mysteries (Volume 28:4). So many great articles. Have a look at the Table of Contents HERE. There truly is something unique about Florida, and Laura Belgrave has her take on it!

Laura Belgrave is the author of the Claudia Hershey Mystery series. When she’s not writing, she works as the social media guru for a skilled nursing facility in Florida, which she says bring its own amazing challenges. You can learn more about her at www.laurabelgrave.com

Laura Belgrave: 
If It Can Happen, It’ll Likely Happen in Florida First

If I had my way, the Florida state bird would be the chameleon, not the mockingbird. Of course, there’s a problem with that because the chameleon is a lizard and it doesn’t have wings. Yet.

I say “yet” because if there’s anything particularly outstanding about Florida, it’s the state’s ever-changing, quirky personality. That means that if anything can happen, it’s likely to happen in Florida first. After all, if you keep up with the news, then you already know Florida earned the dubious distinction of being the first place in the country where one man chewed the face off someone—and that someone was a man the attacker didn’t even know. It occurred in May 2012 and after the initial horror, the story morphed into black humor that went viral all over the web.

Florida is that kind of place: mercurial, divided between rich and poor, and altogether dynamic not for what you can expect next, but for what you can’t. Not surprisingly, I have a love-hate relationship with it and so does Detective Lieutenant Claudia Hershey, the protagonist of my three police procedurals.

For those of you with whom I am not yet acquainted, those mysteries are In the Spirit of Murder, Quietly Dead, and Deadly Associations. They originally appeared in hardcover and paperback, but have since found their way into downloadable ebook format for the iPad, Kindle, Nook and other places. If you’ve read any of them, then you already know my homicide detective came from Cleveland, Ohio to a central Florida town where she figured she could do better as a single parent in raising her daughter, Robin. The town wouldn’t pay as much, but murder was far less likely to occur. Right?

Here’s the thing, though: Central Florida, filled with Palmetto bugs big enough to saddle and ride, may be wildly different in appearance than the shimmery coastal areas that make for great TV, but it isn’t immune to murder. Murder is just a bit better disguised, and more cleverly buried under the kind of small-town secrets that make it tough for cops on limited budgets to adequately tackle.

Still, there are some similarities between the coastal areas and Central Florida. Some years ago the middle of the state adopted the long-held development pattern of its coastal counterparts. Yup. Developers, sensing opportunity even in the part of the state where a breeze is worth a full day of conversation, began tossing up condominiums and planned housing communities. Those changes in Central Florida had one thing in common with housing communities in the rest of the state, and that would be the ever-popular concept of the homeowners association. If you live in a community that has one, then you already know how powerful—and contentious—they can be.

That kind of friction made it impossible for me to ignore the kind of setting where a homeowner’s dispute with the association could spiral out of control. It occurs in my third novel, Deadly Associations. (Catchy title, no?) Now, I’ll admit, I had absolutely no idea what the story would be about when I started writing it. That’s just how it works for me. All I knew is that my own despairing efforts with an aquarium of fish blew an image into my head and I was off and running, dragging Hershey along with me. In my case, the fish died. In Hershey’s case, she was taken hostage.

Here’s the basic opening, straight out of Chapter One.

The water in the fish tank looked cloudy. That couldn’t be good, although most of the fish didn’t seem to mind. They glided tirelessly through the murk, occasionally darting left or right, or up or down, for no apparent reason. Maybe they were scavenging for particles of food invisible to the naked eye. That’s what the guy who owned the tank said. He said they had radar sharp as a bat foraging in the night for insects. Of course, that might not be true, because when the guy talked at all he leaped feverishly from subject to subject with no thought to connecting the dots for his audience. In a bar, it would merely be irksome and you’d sidle away. But this was the guy’s family room and it was impossible sidle anywhere, not with a gun trained at your head. 

There was a lot of tedious research in writing Deadly Associations, of course. Police procedurals demand it. Still, what mildly twisted fun I had while putting Hershey through her paces. For one thing, I got to use terms like “crinkum crankum,” which was of tremendous interest to the police chief’s nephew, a kid that for the second time the chief attached to Hershey like a pilot fish. In the chief’s mind, it might make the kid a little more savvy. Hershey didn’t see it that way. In fact, being saddled with the kid, who bears the preposterous name of Booey, was of great consternation to Hershey. Then again, much that occurs in the small town is of perpetual consternation to Hershey. That’s just her way.

Make no mistake, however. Although I enjoy plugging occasional humor into my novels, none of the books could be described as being a cozy. Then again, neither could they legitimately be described as hard boiled bogged down with detailed violence. What readers tell me is that the Claudia Hershey mysteries do embody the kind of tension that makes them hard to put down. Well, hell, that seems only fair in a state where tension on so very many levels gives Florida its distinction as being one of the most strangely remarkable states in the country.

Now, having said that, really, please don’t make the mistake of believing that all of that distinction comes from the glittery coastal areas. Huh-uh. In fact, the next time you visit, take some time to swing through the central areas. You’ll see the old and the new. You’ll see agriculture and cows. See if you don’t agree that where the old and new meet, collisions are bound to appear. If you aren’t sure, just ask Claudia Hershey. Ask her, too, about the eventual possibility of a flying chameleon.

This is Florida. You never know.