Incredibly unintelligent police officers

Ok, so, the 1st book in the series asked for some pretty MAJOR suspension of disbelief re police officers’ knowledge (or lack thereof) of very public events from the past few decades (don’t want to give spoilers; you’ll see what I mean, if you choose to read the book).

This 2nd book in the series asks us readers for a LARGE amount of suspension of disbelief re the intelligence of experienced detectives with a track record of (correctly) solving many cases. Yes, the majority of officers will likely be of average intelligence, with a somewhat few being at a higher level, but the officers in THIS book are very obtuse/clueless. (Ha! Accidental pun. Clueless ;-) ) In addition, they display some pretty bad policing behaviour, such as leaping to conclusions AND ACTING ON THEM, rather than waiting a fairly short time period for evidence additional to officers’ first impressions from the crime scene, e.g. evidence resulting from a post-mortem/autopsy.
Of course, the detectives also demonstrate bad policing behaviour that, sadly and frustratingly, does NOT require any suspension of disbelief on the part of us readers. What is this behaviour? Outdated, aggressive, accusatory questioning/interrogation techniques that have been scientifically proven to be vastly less effective than calm questioning that utilizes methods scientifically proven to work very well, and to greatly reduce the incidence of false confessions and of lying on the part of the questionee/subject-of-interrogation. We criminologists are saddened and frustrated by the fact that MANY police services and police officers refuse to change their behaviour to what constitutes vastly better policing.

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