TL;DR
8/10. The standout crime-writer’s reference, correcting the confident myths fiction inherits from television, written by a veteran investigator with a teacher’s clarity. It captures the texture of real police work, not just procedure. More current than its shelfmates at 2007; jurisdictional variation and some drift the only caveats. Close to essential for crime writers.
Almost everything you think you know about police work, you learned from television, and almost all of it is wrong. That is the premise of the Book of Police Procedure and Investigation by Lee Lofland, and it makes the book one of the most valuable references a crime writer can own, because it corrects the specific, confident errors that TV has planted in every writer’s head. Among the crime-writer’s reference shelf, this is the standout, and it earns that standing.
Lofland is a veteran police investigator turned writer, and the book carries the authority of someone who did the job for years and then learned to explain it to authors. That combination, real experience plus a teacher’s clarity, is exactly what the subject needs.
Correcting what television taught you
The book’s great value is that it directly targets the myths fiction repeats endlessly. How investigations actually proceed, what police can and cannot legally do, how evidence is really collected and processed, how arrests, interrogations, and crime scenes actually work, all corrected against the dramatic shortcuts that film and television have made writers believe are true. Because so much fictional police work is copied from other fiction rather than from reality, errors compound, and Lofland breaks the cycle by going to the source. For a writer whose sense of police procedure comes secondhand from crime drama, this is the necessary corrective.
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The insider authority
What separates this from the older references on the same shelf is that Lofland writes from direct experience and writes for novelists specifically. He knows not just the procedure but the texture, how officers actually talk, what the work feels like, the details a writer needs to make a police character ring true rather than reading like a TV cop. He also runs a well-known resource connecting writers with law-enforcement expertise, so the book reflects an ongoing engagement with exactly the questions crime writers ask. That practical, writer-facing authority is the book’s defining strength.
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The honest caveats
The caveats are real but milder than for its shelfmates. Published in 2007, it is more current than the early-1990s references around it, though policing, technology, and law have still moved since, so a careful writer verifies specifics, especially anything touching technology or recent legal change. Procedure also varies by jurisdiction, and a book describing general American practice cannot capture the local specifics of every department, so a writer setting a story in a particular place still needs local detail. And it is a procedural reference, not a craft guide, so it grounds the police side without teaching storytelling.
Verdict
It is the best of the crime-writer’s procedural references, valuable precisely because it corrects the confident misinformation that television has installed in every writer’s mind, written by someone who did the work and knows how to teach it. For any writer whose story involves police, investigation, or the criminal justice system, it is close to essential, the first place to fix the errors you do not know you are making. It loses only a little for the inevitable drift since 2007 and for jurisdictional variation. A genuinely excellent, practical reference and the standout of its category.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Book of Police Procedure and Investigation about?
Lee Lofland’s reference for crime writers correcting the inaccuracies fiction inherits from television: how investigations actually proceed, what police can and cannot legally do, and how evidence, arrests, interrogations, and crime scenes really work.
Who wrote it and why does that matter?
Lee Lofland is a veteran police investigator turned writer, so the book combines years of direct experience with a teacher’s clarity, and it is written for novelists specifically rather than for working officers.
Why is it considered the best crime-writer reference?
Because it directly targets the TV-derived myths that writers repeat, going to the source to break the cycle of fiction copying fiction. It also captures the texture of real police work, how officers talk and what the job feels like, not just the procedure.
Is the information current?
More current than the early-1990s references around it, having been published in 2007, but policing, technology, and law have moved since, so specifics should be verified. Procedure also varies by jurisdiction, so local detail is still needed for a specific setting.
Who should read it?
Any writer whose story involves police, investigation, or the criminal justice system. It is the first place to correct the procedural errors a writer does not know they are making from absorbing crime drama.
Does it help me write a convincing police character?
Yes, and that is part of what sets it apart. Beyond procedure, Lofland conveys the texture of the work, how officers actually talk, what the job feels like day to day, which is what makes a fictional officer read as real rather than as a television copy.
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