Barry Maitland and the Shrove

I was extremely disconcerted yesterday to find that a mate who hasn't emailed for a while has deleted his blog. Not quite worried enough to ring him long distance. After all, he did say something about going to New Zealand in his last message. And his blog was only VERY rarely updated. And at the end of yesterday I found out that my external email had been broken all day. It wasn't that no-one was talking to me.

On ANZAC Day I spent the day obsessively reading Barry Maitland's Babel a Brock and Kola mystery. I think these are called 'police procedurals' which has always struck me as a singularly unattractive name for a genre when in fact it's pretty exciting to read about an investigation. It's funny that outside of detective fiction, there's very little about the mundanity of the world of work on fiction. And yet many of us have fascinating jobs. Why are there no great 'public service procedurals'? Maybe I should write one.