Ed McBane was one of America's most popular mystery writers. He wrote police procedurals about fictional 87th precinct in the 1950s. His officers were all young men with very pretty wives, he says. Dragnet is an astonishingly popular television show; 16 million tuned to it on Thursday nights.
Today, another episode from the Revisionist History Live universe. It's an old fashioned lecture, recorded at the New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane University. Malcolm talks about a totally real thing he made up—a taxonomy of the modern mystery story—with a focus on murder mysteries and police procedurals. From Dragnet, to John Grisham, to Sherlock Holmes, it's all in there...and all connected to how we view real policing.
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