Description
Cow Cops, Fish Fuzz, and Tree Police: Alternative Law Officers for your Crime Stories
DATE: October 6-31, 2025 via groups.io
Instructor: Wesley Harris
Description: Characters in overlooked law enforcement professions are bringing new life to crime fiction. The genre is saturated with FBI agents and big city detectives. Rural law enforcement has so much potential in crime fiction. Have you considered a deputy sheriff, park ranger, tribal officer, or game warden fighting for his or her life in the middle of nowhere? It has worked for Nevada Barr and C. J. Box.
Nevada Barr, Tony Hillerman and C. J. Box. became best sellers with characters in unique law enforcement jobs who typically work far from backup and often out of radio and cell range. Barr’s Anna Pigeon works for the National Park Service as a law enforcement ranger while Box’s Joe Pickett is a Wyoming game warden. Hillerman wrote of Navajo tribal police officers.
The rural settings for the characters do not imply a lack of action. It just means they usually handle it on their own. The setting itself in remote areas becomes a character, often one of the deadliest in the stories.
These neglected law officers are making their presence known in today’s fiction. Park rangers, game wardens, deputy sheriffs, small town cops, and overlooked feds like Forest Service law enforcement officers and U.S. Fish & Wildlife agents had made appearances recently. Would one of these work for your next novel?
We will thoroughly delve into the jobs of speciality law enforcement so each career Harris will present job descriptions and other data, photos, work challenges and additional resources for later use so you can learn about jobs from livestock rangers to air marshals to harbor patrol cops.
Join us to learn alternatives to the same old same old in your next story.
Instructor Bio:
In addition to a law enforcement career spanning over 40 years , Wesley Harris has written professionally for over three decades, authoring numerous books and articles on police procedure and American history. His work has appeared in national magazines like POLICE, Law Officer, Mature Living, Wild West and America’s Civil War. He serves on the Criminal Justice Faculty of the University of Phoenix. In addition to providing consulting and editing service to writers, Harris is an experienced online instructor and a repeat presenter for RWA’s Kiss of Death. His police career included many death investigations and successful murder prosecutions. He holds B.A. and M.A degrees from Louisiana Tech University.
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