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'Police Story' had some of the best writing on television, and one reason for that is because most of the scripts were based on real cases.

John Wells and Christopher Chulack were pretty honest from the get-go in our first meeting about 'Southland.' They were looking to create characters that were believable in the environment of the LAPD - multi-dimensional, layered characters with real flaws; good-hearted cops mixed with the perfect amount of heroism and irony.

Every one of my books is written from the viewpoint of cops, with the exception of my book Killer on the Road, which is written from the viewpoint of a serial killer.

I read a lot of detective novels.

I write crime novels and thrillers - I'm a big fan of cops. You can never forget that they run towards what everyone else runs away from.

I like to stay within the context of the character's background. If he's a cop, I have to make sure the audience is convinced that this person, a cop, can do only so much without a gun.

I never read detective novels. I started out in graduate school writing a more serious book. Right around that time I read 'The Day of the Jackal' and 'The Exorcist'. I hadn't read a lot of commercial fiction, and I liked them.

I definitely have an affection for detective fiction, and when I first read Dashiell Hammett's 'The Maltese Falcon,' that book and its author made an enormous impression on me as a reader and a writer, and led me to other hard-boiled American writers like Raymond Chandler and Ross McDonald, among many.

When I watch cop shows, I really enjoy them because you can really follow the story and get involved, and the characters are always really interesting.

With crime fiction, you have to write a half-dozen before they catch on.