Ex-copper CHARLIE OWEN on why he put pen to paper in his first novel

The inspiration for my novel? Easy, thirty years in the police service, boy and man. On the streets most of the time with some amazing company, seeing and doing things most people never come across.

Joseph Wambaugh’s The Choirboys remains the ultimate work of police fiction – I read it at least once a year. It’s the Daddy. It talks about policing at a level I understand and recognise and the goings-on in Los Angeles regularly mirror events in the towns I worked in. G.F. Newman’s A Detective’s Tale touches a similar nerve. Its portrayal of the police service in the 1970s, my era, is simply stunning.

I served in the police service between 1976 and 2006. During my time I worked with extraordinary men and women who did, said and witnessed things that defied belief. Some of the greatest undiscovered stand-up comedians in the country wear a police uniform. They were, and continue to be, a constant source of ideas for me – thirty years worth!

During my service I soaked up events around me. My characters are amalgams of the thousands of officers I worked with or met. The stories are based on the millions of stories (most probably made up, embellished or apocryphal) that enlivened many an evening winding down in the station bars! I don’t doubt that the same stories were repeated in police bars in Wambaugh’s old manor, Los Angeles, or in police bars in Sydney, Cape Town, Toronto or Tokyo. The global police family is essentially cut from the same cloth. The personality trait that each of them will need above any other in order to survive is a sense of humour – the darker the better!!

THERE WAS A TIME WHEN THE POLICE GOT ON WITH THE JOB...