One of the most popular sub-genres of the mystery genre is the so-called police procedural. Unlike other mysteries in which the identity of the suspect usually is unknown until the end of the story, in a police procedural the identity of the culprit often is known early in the story, and the focus of the story is on the various investigative techniques that the police used to uncover that identity:
The Grell Mystery (1914) represents one of the earliest known examples of this sub-genre, although procedurals did not really become popular until after World War II, thanks to the inventive fictions of writers like Lawrence Treat (V as in Victim, 1945) and to a number of semidocumentary films that depicted actual police work.
One of the earliest writers to consistently achieve popularity as an author of procedurals was Salvatore Lombino, who first achieved fame with his debut novel The Blackboard Jungle (1954, written under the name he legally adopted in 1952, Evan Hunter), went on to pen the screenplay for the Hitchcock classic The Birds (among numerous other TV and film scripts), but who is best known to most readers for the police procedurals he wrote under the pseudonym Ed McBain:
Another author who would greatly influence this sub-genre was John Creasy, who over a 40-year career penned 562 books under 28 pseudonyms, the best known of which probably are the procedurals he wrote under the pseudonym J. J. Marric:
This sub-genre would attract numerous other (now famous) authors: Hillary Waugh; P. D. James (Baroness James of Holland Park); Reginald Hill; Joseph Wambaugh; Tony Hillerman...to mention only a few of the better known....
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