Officer Turns Rumor Into Police Novel : Writer Uses Poetic License to Spice Up Police Routine

Ever since Paul Bishop joined the Los Angeles Police Department 11 years ago, he has heard rumors about fellow officers who raced their police cars to Las Vegas or Tijuana and back during a single shift.

None of his co-workers could--or would--confirm the rumors. But the audaciousness of such feats appealed to Bishop, and he used one as the core of his first police novel, “Citadel Run” (Tor Books, $17.95).

“I investigated it, and it has really happened,” said Bishop, a Camarillo resident who, until two months ago, was stationed at the San Fernando Valley’s West Valley Division. “There are three or four different versions of it, but I think I’ve got it down to who and when it was.”

In “Citadel Run,” Calico Jack Walker, a 30-year street police officer on the verge of retiring from the Police Department, and his partner, Tina Tamiko, a Japanese-American rookie, accept a challenge to make a daring run to Las Vegas and back during their night shift. They even solve a crime en route, an attempted robbery at a casino.

The novel, which is based in the Van Nuys Division, where Bishop, 33, spent two years as a patrol officer, qualifies as crime fiction, he said. “But it’s really a novel about the police. I was interested in getting down my thoughts about police work. I was looking for a little bit different way to do it than (Joseph) Wambaugh, Dallas Barnes and some of the other police writers have done.”

Bishop said he always knew he would be a writer. He read voraciously as a child and always enjoyed telling stories. He started writing free-lance nonfiction articles in 1979 and helped start the now-defunct Mystery magazine, where he was senior editor. Later, he published The Thieftaker Journals, a small-press mystery magazine. His first novel, in 1985, was a paperback Western, “Shroud of Vengeance,” written under the name of Pike Bishop.

Plenty of Experiences

Bishop said police work has given him plenty of experiences to draw upon. For nine years, he has been a detective in various units, including juvenile, sex crimes, auto theft, robbery and vice, all in the West Valley. He is now working in the analysis and surveillance unit of the Anti-Terrorist Division in downtown Los Angeles.

“Citadel Run” evolved from an assignment from a mystery magazine to write a true short story. The completed work sold to the first publisher he sent it to.

“This was the first time I had ever attempted to write about police work in any type of story,” Bishop said. “Before that point, I was kidding myself by saying I was too close to it to be objective--when really I was scared of doing it in case my thoughts on it were found invalid or whatever, because you’re going to get some judgment from your peers when you do something like that.”

His colleagues at the West Valley Division have been supportive, Bishop said. And, he said, they were invaluable as sources of “war stories” and other information. At first, Bishop tried to make the novel as realistic as possible, but writing about routine police work turned out to be boring. Bishop said about 95% of police work is paper work. So he used some poetic license to spice up the proceedings. The characters in the novel are all risk-takers and, in fact, some of them seem downright adolescent.

‘Peter Pan Complex’

“They all have a strong strain of that Peter Pan complex,” Bishop said. “A lot of policemen are little boys who just don’t want to grow up. I think the essence of the book is that, yes, OK, they’re having a good time and they’re screwing around when there’s nothing much going on, but the second anything happens, they are professionals.”

Because police officers often find themselves in tense situations, “when the down time comes, you have a tendency to party a lot harder than, say, your general CPA. And, again, it’s the personality,” Bishop said. “You’re drawn to that type of job because you’re like that. You’re getting warrior types, Type A personalities.

“When the action isn’t on, they’re going to seek it. You’re going to do something weird, crazy,” he said.

Last summer, to satisfy his own thrill-seeking, Bishop spent a week in the saddle taking horses from their winter to their summer feeding grounds in Northern California. The year before, he went hang gliding in the Valley and parachuting in Perris Valley. Other police officers he knows are involved in racing cars, physical fitness competitions and running marathons.

But, in spite of their constant need for that edge of excitement, Bishop said, police officers believe they are accomplishing something socially meaningful on the job. “Their job provides them with a sense of ‘I’m a warrior, but I’m also protecting my family,’ be it a small family of wife and kids, or the whole city.”

Although the violence in the book is graphic, guns are not involved in most of the action. Bishop said that is a reflection of his own experience. “There’s been a lot of physical confrontation, but, generally, that’s all it takes for the situation to resolve itself. Yes, we take our guns out, but we don’t often have to use them.”

Bishop hopes his novel will succeed in breaking some of the stereotypes about police. Although police officers are sometimes seen as supermen who can solve all our problems, he said, the only time civilians have any contact is when they receive a traffic ticket or are the victims of a crime.

“Then they feel we haven’t done our job, otherwise they wouldn’t be a victim,” Bishop said. “What I was trying to express is that these policemen are basically no different from anybody else, except when it comes time to be a professional and do their job, then everything else goes by the wayside.”

Bishop said police work in the five Valley divisions is very different from police work downtown. And it is not that Valley officers do not see the same kinds of action, Bishop said. In fact, the number of calls in the West Valley is the highest in the city. “The difference is in the attitude of the people who live there. They tend to have a more affluent life style in the Valley. You have to handle that type of situation differently.

“I think what it boils down to in a lot of cases is, there has to be more tact used. In the Valley, residents demand more. I think the attitude of the people downtown is that they have a little more realization of the real world, they’re a little bit more accepting when you tell them, ‘Hey, this is the way things are, I’m not going to be able to do anything in this situation.’ Sometimes, when we’re dealing with victims in the Valley, their attitude is, ‘Well, why can’t you do something?’ ”

600 Mysteries

Bishop loves books and reads two or three a week. One of his favorite writers is Dick Francis, a former jockey who writes mysteries with horse-racing backgrounds. Over the years, Bishop has accumulated a collection of almost 600 mysteries set in the world of horse racing. He said he recently culled his library of mysteries down to 3,000.

When he completes 20 years of service, Bishop plans to move on to something else, taking with him his 40% pension from the Police Department. Meanwhile, he spends two hours a day after work writing on a word processor in the book-lined study of his mobile home. His wife, Elaine, reads and offers suggestions on everything he writes.

He has almost completed “Chapel of the Ravens,” a mainstream mystery set in a professional indoor soccer league. Then he will write the first sequel to “Citadel,” which is already outlined. He has plans for three to five sequels, all featuring Calico and Tina.

“I think policemen are the best storytellers in the world,” he said. “When you spend eight hours a day with someone in a patrol car or on a stakeout, the war stories which fly back and forth are a writer’s nirvana.”

Bishop will sign copies of “Citadel Run” at Waldenbooks at the Oaks Mall in Thousand Oaks on Jan. 30.