Cop Lit

On Galleycat today Sarah Weinman reports--

"Cop Lit" Takes Center Stage in France

The Guardian's Paris correspondent Jason Burke reports on a new publishing phenomenon, where police officers of all stripes are storming the bestseller lists with a variety of novels, graphic novels, memoirs and other types of book formats. Philippe Pichon, the 37-year-old chief superintendent and bestselling poet and novelist, offered his insight into the glut of so-called 'creative cops.' "A poet can be a policemen and a policeman can be a poet," Pichon, chief of a police station with 85 staff, told The Observer last week. "I am an exalted humanist. Every day on the streets I see the true humanity of things, and I recount them in my work."
for the rest of the story go here http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/

Ed here: Both Ed McBain's 87th and the tv show Barney Miller had cops who were writing books. Easy to envision a sit-com situation where a squad room full of detectives are all at work on novels and screenplays.