When I decided to do a roundtable of California crime writers, I was really spoiled for choice. California is really two states, north and south—some people say it’s three, pointing out the concerns of people in the farmers in the central valley or the residents on the Mexico border are not the same as the marijuana growers of Humboldt. Yet all of these writers—who represent the diversity of the state—are invested in a Californian ideal and a Californian identity.
Our esteemed panel consisted of Steph Cha (Your House Will Pay), Elizabeth Little (Pretty as a Picture), Tyler Dilts (Long Beach Homicide series), Gary Phillips (writer/editor of many crime novels and comics from Hollis PI to the Guns & Tacos series), Michael Nava (Henry Rios mysteries), and Lisa Brackmann (Go-Between). We talked about police, particularly in LA. We talked about kids (Steph and Tyler are both new parents), about Trump, about apocalypse and about San Diego. Oh yes, and the fires, the crazy California proposition system, and about a cat balcony and other lifestyle upgrades during the pandemic.
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“Is the Defund the Police Procedural a subgenere yet?”
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Lisa Levy: So, people, from the precipice we stand on what do you see for crime fiction? And specifically, for California crime fiction?
Elizabeth Little: lol ease us into it why don’t you!
Lisa L: I know you can handle a little rough, Elizabeth. You survived a lot of grad school.
Elizabeth: Still paying for it, too
Gary Phillips: Some of us were asked in the wake of the BLM protests and the like how the police are portrayed in our work requires re-thinking.
Lisa Brackmann: I really don’t see much beyond what I am focusing on, and obviously that tends to be weird-ass shit with limited appeal.
Lisa L: God, Lisa, story of my life.
Michael Nava: I see greater and greater diversity among writers who write crime fiction, a trend that began in the 90s—Walter Moseley, Paula Woods, Lucha Corpi—and has only gathered steam. They write novels that weave issues of social justice into their stories.
Tyler Dilts: I wish I knew. I know I’m completely reinventing the way I write about police.
Lisa B: Gary’s point about reexamining the role of police in crime fiction is super-important.
I never wrote about them to begin with so it’s not much of a pivot for me.
Lisa L: Police is a huge topic. The first roundtable I did was with Canadian crime writers and they had the same concerns.
Tyler: Is the Defund the Police Procedural a subgenere yet?
Lisa B: My stuff has always been overtly political and message-centered—I hope without being didactic. So I hope to do more of that, personally.
Michael: My forthcoming novel involves the long history of LAPD spying via its intelligence units from the 1920s on. There is a lot to unpack in that culture.
Lisa L: I’ve been thinking it would be a good international topic. But yes, California and LA in particular do not have a particularly good track record re police. And that sounds great, Michael. It’s really rich and complicated history.
Elizabeth: I’ve been thinking about how progressive California politics have gotten. I can’t speak for NorCal or SD, but here in LA we passed a whole slate of criminal justice-oriented measures.
Gary: Measure J passed in L.A. County, taking certain discretionary monies away from the criminal justice budget. On the other hand, 90 percent of the LAPD ain’t in love with their chief.
Steph Cha: I think a strong contender for 2020’s phrase of the year is “Everything That’s Going On,” a kind of blanket acknowledgment that the world is fucked up in ways that are making themselves apparent in rapid fire succession. This is true all over the country, and definitely in California, and I think crime fiction has to follow that ETGO and pin it down.
Lisa L: ETGO is good. It’s the shorthand we need, Steph.
Lisa B: SD passed a police oversight measure—we’ll see how much teeth it has—has a progressive Democratic mayor, and for the first time in my memory a Board of Supervisors with a Democratic majority.
Michael: San Francisco, too. There are courts that address people with mental health and drug addiction issues who used to just be thrown into jail.
Lisa L: So California—at least in the south—sounds like it wants some change?
Lisa B: California is moving in the direction it has been going for the last…I dunno, decade? More?
Gary: Love it about Michael’s new novel. When I was a community organizer, we ran afoul of Gates’ PDID, Public Disorder and Intelligence Division. The Red Squad was its precursor.
Michael: Yes, PDID is in the book! There’s a great book called Protectors of Privilege that details that history. I borrowed liberally from it.
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“A lot of the rest of the country hates us.”
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Lisa B: We are like the rest of the country sped up and on steroids.
Lisa L: YES. But also trying to relax.
Elizabeth: In the past 10 years I have felt … yes, that Lisa. An increased velocity, I guess, in political engagement.
Lisa B: Though I’m starting to feel like California as trendsetter may not be enough to overcome the deepening divisions in this country, so many of which are along geographic lines.
Steph: But at the same time, we missed big on some important propositions. We said no to affirmative action, we passed the regressive tax and rejected the progressive one and showed that corporations can buy favorable law with enough investment in advertising. We are a known blue voter base, which is great but also manipulable.
Lisa B: A lot of the rest of the country hates us. The proposition system is a whole other deal. It’s nuts.
Gary: For sure tech such as facial recognition, drones, etc. will be utilized more by law enforcement. At the same time more scrutiny is on them, more pushback from elected [officials]. Look at the sheriff and the L.A. Supervisors, all women I might add.
Steph: And Villanueva is squirming now.
Tyler: Good
Lisa B: That’s the LA Sheriff?
Gary: Steph, yeah. Uber and Lyft spent what, 22 mil?
Steph: Yea, he ran as a Democrat but his actual platform was “more leniency for brutal cops.”
Steph: 185M!
Gary: They could have paid the workers with that, and then some.
Lisa L: REALLY?
Lisa B: The proposition system is…pretty broken and easy to manipulate. But I do think a message of “FREEDUM!!” and individualism tends to resonate here.
Lisa L: 185M is a lot
Steph: Right?? If only corporations would spend their money paying their workers instead of fighting not to pay them…
Lisa B: Yeah, it’s not a good sign for the future.
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Lazy Writers and Hot Topics
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Michael: How do you write a police procedural in this day and age?
Lisa L: I think that’s an interesting question, Michael. I’m also interested in how you write domestic suspense during a pandemic.
Steph: Police procedurals can be done. They’re not going away as long as lay people don’t run into tons of homicides. But I’m automatically suspicious of a cop novel that doesn’t engage in any way with the discourse around policing.
Tyler: Michael, I’m asking myself that every day.
Lisa B: I don’t see how you even write one (that doesn’t engage with that discourse I mean).
Steph: In addition to not agreeing with the politics, I also have to wonder where else the writer was lazy.
Lisa L: All of the topics crime writers are interested in are up for grabs—police, corruption, power struggles, institutional mismanagement.
Lisa B: Speaking as someone who has judged the Edgars…twice…there’s a lot of lazy writing out there.
Tyler: I second that, Lisa.
Lisa L: Really those are the topics people are interested in, with a healthy dose of how do I get through this?
Michael: Even if your cop protagonist is one who runs afoul of the brass and is a “good” cop with personal integrity, those books still take place against the backdrop of an entrenched and very reactionary police culture.
Gary: The stuff you mention Lisa, corruption and so on, hasn’t that always been up for grabs for crime writers?
Lisa B: Gary, I think it’s the essential material of crime writing.
Lisa L: Absolutely. But now I think the interest is broader—Not Just for Crime Writers Anymore
Elizabeth: Right, even if you write a noble cop in a broken system, you are still ultimately pushing a narrative that the system itself isn’t all bad.
Tyler: That’s why my current novel is about how my protagonist stops being a cop.
Lisa B: I have never been interested in writing police procedurals, and I still am not.
Steph: And that someone within that system will offer the corrective when it malfunctions.
Elizabeth: Has anyone started a new … that’s just what I was about to ask Tyler…
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“What the F*0% Am I Supposed to Write?
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Lisa: I think all of our systems are now under scrutiny. And that is generally a good thing, historically.
Lisa B: Yes.
Michael: Right, Elizabeth. I mean I love The Closer and Major Crimes but I was also a prosecutor in LA in the 80s and that’s not what the cops that I dealt with as witnesses and investigators were like.
Elizabeth: If anyone has been able to write the past few months, how have you pivoted?
Lisa B: Michael, yours would be the perspective I’d want to read. I don’t know enough about that world to do it credibly myself.
Tyler: I’m writing about COVID and police abolition
Lisa L: You go Tyler!
Lisa B: After writing Black Swan Rising, I haven’t written much of anything. I realized that I haven’t written a book for the entirety of the Trump administration.
Tyler: [Mine] might wind up being more therapeutic than anything else.
Michael: Being a cop is tough, no doubt, and many try to do the job they’re paid to do but I also experienced an us-versus-them mentality that could easily shade into racism or homophobia.
Elizabeth: None of my books would exist if I had a competent therapist, so….
Tyler: Ha!
Lisa B: BSR was about lolololol misogyny, white nationalism, online harassment and mass shootings in the context of a highly polarized political campaign. Started it mid-2014. Wrote the bulk in 2016. And I’m like…okay, that was a prequel to what we’re living in now. What the fuck am I supposed to write?
Lisa L: I think you need to Zazzle that, Lisa.
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“I find I write with even greater passion now than when I started 30 years ago.”
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Gary: I’m finishing a novel set in ’63 L.A. A time when Chief Parker actively recruited white officers from the Jim Crow south.
Lisa B: Wow. Looking forward to reading that.
Tyler: I scrapped a novel I was 3/4 of the way through because it didn’t feel relevant anymore,
Gary: Therapeutic nonetheless
Lisa L: Oh, I want to read that, Gary.
Elizabeth: I scrapped one too, Tyler. I was like “who gives a shit”?
Lisa B: Me three. Not that it wasn’t relevant. I just couldn’t do it.
Michael: The new book is set in LA in 1986 but it involved a ballot proposition—to quarantine people with AIDS—and police spying so the more things change the more they stay the same? I find I write with even greater passion now than when I started 30 years ago.
Gary: Thanks, Elizabeth.
Lisa L: That’s admirable, Michael.
Lisa B: I’ve been writing and recording music. That’s been extremely therapeutic. I’m finally feeling ready to write I think.
Gary: Definitely want to read your book, Michael.
Lisa B: Same!
Elizabeth: I’m working on a comic project right now with Alex Segura—it’s a superhero who has to grapple with the fact that you might not be able to fix anything by throwing people in jail? Batman meets New Jim Crow I guess.
Lisa B: Oooh! Love comics!
Lisa L: OMG Elizabeth two of my favorite people! I wish I liked comics.
Michael: Alex is great! What a fantastic project. Even comics are dark.
Gary: Lisa B, you are a musician?
Lisa B: Yeah. I gave it up for like 17 years and started again a couple years ago. I had a band in LA for over a decade.
Gary: Dang, on the band I mean. Very cool.
Lisa L: Lisa tell me more! I am a total music nerd. Married a musician. I live among many guitar pedals.
Lisa B: <http://www.lisabrackmann.com/music|www.lisabrackmann.com/music>
Lisa L: Sweet!
Lisa B: I’m doing some half-assed home recording—first time I’ve ever done it—with my guitarist buddy in LA—he’s a pro. I am not! I was the singer/songwriter/bassist and…did I mention weird idiosyncratic shit with limited appeal?
Gary: Sweet on the comics!
Elizabeth: Still early stages so who knows, it could turn into something totally different!
Steph: Wow you all are on some cool shit! I’m writing a foreword for a couple Dolores Hitchins novels and after that, just barreling through short stories for Best American. But hoping to start a new book in 2021? It’s been a while.
Tyler: Steph, I can’t wait for the new BAMS
Lisa B: YES!!!!
Gary Phillips: Yep
Lisa L: How is it, Steph?
Lisa B: I hope that is a harbinger of where crime fiction is going.
Steph: It’s gonna be great!
Elizabeth: I can’t wait. Just the stuff that everyone has been talking about makes me pretty excited for the near future of California crime writing???
Lisa L: Me either. You are going to make me like short stories.
Steph: Honestly, I do see why these collections have been so heavy on men. There are issues of Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock with like ten eligible stories by men for one or two by women.
Lisa L: Amen.
Elizabeth: What makes a story eligible, Steph?
Steph Cha: Written by an American author, or an author who lives in America, and published in an American publication in 2020.
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“How Much More Apocalypse Do We Need?”
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Lisa: Another question I wanted to ask you all: How did the fires affect you?
Lisa B: I hate the fires. Every year I dread the fall more.
Lisa L: What was it like staring down Armageddon?
Lisa B: I mean, how much more apocalypse do we need?
Steph: Only atmospherically, but wow, what a heavy fucking metaphor.
Gary: What Lisa B said.
Lisa B: Yeah. And add to that the incredible callousness and stupidity of Trump
Elizabeth: Totally—like, the fires are bad enough on their own, but heaping them on top of … everything else
Lisa B: and the GOP in general with their refusal to deal with climate change.
Lisa B: FUCKING RAKES!
Lisa B: It’s just incredibly insulting.
