The Blue Religion

The Blue Religion: An Introduction

A long time ago, when my first book was published, the first review it received classified the novel as a “police procedural.” This classification was news to me. I thought I had simply written a book, a crime novel, if it absolutely needed to be classified. Okay, a mystery, even. Sure, it was about cops and robbers and how the good guys work to catch the bad guys, but I never realized that I had ventured into what was called a “subgenre.” I soon learned that crime fiction is a world of genres and subgenres and even sub-subgenres.

Nearly twenty years later, I sit here writing the introduction to a book that celebrates one of those subgenres. Welcome to the world of the cop story. Welcome to stories that explore the burden of the badge.

One note on these stories, however. While this tome and its individual stories will fall under the classification of police procedural, they are anything but explorations of procedure. They are explorations of life. They are explorations of character.

In my observations of the blue religion as both a journalist and a writer of fiction, I have found that most people who carry badges believe they are part of a misunderstood breed. And I believe they have a point. How are we to weigh the burden of the badge if we do not carry the badge? In these stories, we do it by exploring the many facets of character of those who carry the badge. As you will find, procedure is only window dressing for our true focus. We learn what it is like to corner a murderer, to unmask a hidden killer. We walk the line between justice and revenge. We see what it costs to do the job both right and wrong. We find resolution and redemption.

There is an adage attributed to Joseph Wambaugh, the great writer of police stories, that informs our effort here. It is as simple as it is true. It holds that the best story about the badge is not about how a cop works on a case. It is about how the case works on the cop. In the subtlety of that distinction is the axiom that gave the writers who are gathered here all they needed.

I know a detective who works cold cases in Los Angeles. He works out of a windowless office, with his desk pushed up against his partner’s. He has a glass top on his desk. With such a basic setup in almost any other office in the world, one would almost invariably find photos of loved ones – children, wives, families – under the glass top. Smiling faces, reminders of what is good in life. Inspiration to do the job well.

But not this detective. He slips the photos of dead people under his glass. Photos of murder victims whose killers he still hunts. They are reminders of what is bad in life. Reminders of the job unfinished and inspiration to keep going and to do the job well.

To me, that gets to the heart of character, not procedure. And that is what this book is all about.

– Michael Connelly