• What is a police story?
• Characteristics of the police story
• Parts of the police story
• police story characters
• police story examples
• the black cop

We explain what a police story is, its characteristics, parts and characters. Also, what is black police.

The detective story is a modern narrative genre, emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

What is a police story?

The story police or police story is one of the forms of narrative police or detective narrative, which also includes the novel. It is, naturally, in its short form, that is, stories in which a crime takes place and whose plot summarizes the efforts of a protagonist to discover the culprit. Usually the protagonist is a journalist, detective or police officer.

The police story is gender modern narrative, emerged during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, although it is possible to trace antecedents to eras as remote as classical antiquity.

Its beginnings took place within the framework of the so-called “subliterature”, that is, of “cheap” and “mass” literature, published in magazines and other popular formats. This is due to the fact that the crime was considered a vulgar matter, of little aesthetic value, typical of the scandalous chronicles of events in tabloid newspapers.

The pioneer of the detective genre was the French lawyer Francois Gayot de Pitaval (1673-1743), who published his 23-volume Famous and interesting causes (1734-1743), an account of the most famous criminal cases in France.

His success was such that these works were reprinted for decades, even acquiring the name of their author for this new genre (known as Pitaval). Thus, the foundations were laid for later similar projects, such as the famous pitavals by Alexandre Dumas published under the title famous crimes between 1839 and 1841, widely translated and distributed in numerous serials and magazines.

For his part, the American Edgar Allan Poe was the one who formalized the genre in literature with his stories and crime novels. Among his works stand out The crimes of morgue Street from 1841 and The stolen letter of 1844, starring his famous detective Auguste Dupin.

In fact, Dupin was a precursor to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous Sherlock Holmes. From then on, the genre had enormous success throughout the 20th century, a success that continues to this day.

Throughout its evolution, the detective genre built two different tendencies: the so-called British school and the so-called American school. We can define each as follows:

• The English school, the initial one, whose stories focus on solving the crime through the intellectual deduction of the detective, generally set in the upper classes of society and with very elaborate and complex intrigues. Its best example is the novel by Agatha Christie.
• The North American school, centered on the so-called "black novel" or "black police", in which the crimes take place within a Social context and politically determined, usually in the lower and middle classes of society, and crimes are solved through quick action, rather than calm meditation. The classic exponent of this genre is the American Raymond Chandler.

Characteristics of the police story

Broadly speaking, the detective story is characterized by the following:

• It has a more or less elaborate plot, and its starting point is a committed crime: robberies, murders, etc. The objective of the protagonist is, then, to decipher the way in which the crime was committed and to find the culprit.
• It stars an emissary of order: a journalist, a detective or a policeman.Some detective stories focus on the unknown of who committed the crime; others instead focus on discovering how it was committed.
• They are usually narrated in the first or third person, always accompanying the detective in his inquiries. The end of the story coincides with the resolution of the mystery and the restoration of the Justice.
• The reader may know who the culprit is (but not know how to prove it), or they may find out along with the detective (or even after the character knows). In any case, the tension in the story is produced by a plot element that is hidden until the end.

Parts of the police story

At the beginning of the story occurs the crime that justifies the story.

Every police story can be divided into three successive parts:

• Establishment of enigma. The initial part of the story chronologically, and that justifies everything else, because in it a crime is committed or it is discovered that a crime has been committed: a body is found, the crown jewels disappear, the bank vault wakes up empty, etc.
• Research period. The detective makes his entrance and begins the search for clues and the work deductive. To do this, he must conduct interviews, review the crime scene and try to piece together what happened there. Throughout this stage, the plot becomes more and more complex, as the detective discovers more clues and begins to formulate his first hypothesis.
• Restoration of justice. It is the stage of solving the mystery: the final element that allows to find the culprit is discovered and often this begins a chase. Finally, the offender is punished and the social order is restored.

police story characters

A detective story can have more or less characters, which can be grouped around the following categories:

• The detective, protagonist of the story, either alone or with a partner of unquestionable loyalty.His is the responsibility to deduce the crime and restore justice, and for this he has various talents and knowledge.
• Law enforcement, at the head of which is the detective, but which include his colleagues (if any), other police officers, journalists and other characters interested in solving the case. It is not unusual for many of them to be suspects as well.
• Suspects, that is, characters who could have committed the crime, since they are somehow linked to it. The vast majority will be innocent of the crime, but it may be that they commit other crimes to cover up their possible involvement or that they are accomplices in some way. Others will simply hinder the progress of the investigation or turn out to be red herrings.
• The criminal, the individual (or group of them) responsible for the crime, and who ultimately must be brought to justice one way or another. He plays the role of antagonist in the story and will actively try to hinder the investigation.
• Witnesses, those who witnessed the crime or had something to do with it but are not suspects. These characters will provide the detective with some of the clues needed to solve the mystery.

police story examples

Edgar Allan Poe laid the foundations for crime as a literary genre.

Some examples of police stories are as follows:

• The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe.
• the speckled band by Arthur Conan Doyle.
• The story of the leopard man by JackLondon.
• The biter bit by Wilkie Collins.
• the blue sequin by Richard Austin Freeman.
• five killers by Raymond Chandler.

the black cop

A subgenre within the police narrative is known as noir crime or crime novel, which delves into the darkest aspects of the society in which the crime to be solved takes place. This means that society itself is represented in a decadent way, with values ​​in crisis.

In these cases, the investigation of the crime usually puts the detective himself in danger, faced with a network of corruption or of economic and political intrigues. In many cases, solving the case will require much more from the detective than deductive skills, and it may be necessary to break some laws if that is required to find the truth. TRUE.