Cops are never happy when they find themselves forced to arrest an author, especially one whose specialty is cuddling up with a warm, fuzzy murderer. In fact, as repulsive as it may seem, many mystery writers go so far as to date murderers, and so these writers necessarily are not good bets to help the cops.

Besides that, mystery writers know all about what to do until the cops arrive and no-nos at the crime scene. In fact, you just can't trust someone who writes mystery novels to stay out of trouble by having writer's block. They're always way too knowledgeable, because research is just part of a day in the writing life. Authors like to stay about five steps ahead of the cops at all times.

Like their fictional characters, however — even poisoners have bad days — mystery writers sometime slip up. They don't know what to say when the cops ask "where were you when the victim got it?" They can be intimidated by the four-minute detective who, in the presence of a grisly homicide, wants to give the author a quiz on just what happened and whodunit, especially if the murder weapon was lifted from the desk of a vacationing critic and the author has recently perpetrated a letter to the editor.

A smart-mouthed author will often try to buy time while cooking up a decent alibi by indulging in light banter with the cops or by giving them a learned disquisition on police procedures. And any mystery writer worth the paper her books are printed on can stall by explaining to the cops why history is necessary, which makes the cops so mad they want to put the author into a locked room and throw away the key.

But authors tend to know their rights, even if they're not so cocksure about the legal thriller. When the clues are blowin' in the wind, the author can even resort to such cowardly and self-serving behavior as blaming the crime on the sins of the reader. When it becomes absolutely clear that readers have iron-clad alibis — being halfway across the continent at the time of the murder, the really inventive author has no difficulty explaining how we got from there to here without a jet. Mystery writers can pull any kind of rotten, slimy trick they like, because they've all read the master trickster and have committed Shakespearean mysteries to memory. It doesn't get any more devious than that, plotwise.

From the big inning of the interrogation, to the small hours of the morning when the big concrete apple is served for breakfast with bad coffee in styrofoam cups, the cops never have a real fighting chance. After several sweaty hours grilling the talkative author, who might as well wear a neon sign that says The Information Desk is Open, the cops come away from the experience with the odd feeling that they don't exist unless the author is speaking about them.

That's because, the stockroom managers in that great publishing house in the sky have dealt the author all the good cards. The author is, of course, guilty as charged, but she'll never see the inside of a penitentiary or a witness stand. Unless she has a press pass.

Submitted* by Polly Whitney, who's been there, done that, and is still here.
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*"submitted" refers to the fact that this cyberbook originated as submissions to the DorothyL email discussion group.