Write what you know

[Mouse]

Luckily, there's no beheadings as of yet! The dead guy had his throat slit in a hotel. The cleaner found him and yelled for the guy on reception who I presume would have then rang the police.

Cam, I didn't think of Google streetview. Good idea, ta! (TJ is a she )

 

[Mark R]

Luckily, there's no beheadings as of yet! The dead guy had his throat slit in a hotel. The cleaner found him and yelled for the guy on reception who I presume would have then rang the police.

Cam, I didn't think of Google streetview. Good idea, ta! (TJ is a she )

In the UK the procedure is as follows:

The police would be called, the police would attend but a doctor/coroner would have to pronounce life extinct. If a body is obviously dead then the ambulance service will not attend, if there is uncertainty then they will.

If the circumstances are suspicious, as above, then a crime scene will be declared, the emergency on-call coroner will be contacted and will attend, as will scenes of crime officers (SOCOs).

Shorly after that the on-call CID officers would attend the scene.

 

[The Judge]

(TJ is a she )

I really do have to wear some brighter lipstick, and to hell with the nude look...

Just a (possible) minor correction to Ursa's post. In England and Wales, the coroner is a legal post, not like in some parts of the US where (I think) the coroner is what we would call a foresic officer or a pathologist, which is why in shows like CSI they have to wait for the coroner to arrive and check time of death etc before the paramedics or whoever can remove the body. I've never gone through the process myself, but I imagine the police would do the necessary liaising in the case of an obvious murder, since they would deal with the investigation. There have been a raft of new rules, though, with regard to Coroners' courts and inquests, so if you're thinking of that, Mouse, don't rely on old TV shows!


EDIT: crossed with Mark R's post. I'll always defer to superior knowledge, but would a coroner (ie not merely a coroner's officer) really attend a crime scene in England and Wales? (Not the UK, of course, since Scotland has its own legal system.) And since a coroner need not have any medical knowledge, I'm not sure they could possibly pronounce life extinct at the scene in that way.

 

[Mark R]

EDIT: crossed with Mark R's post. I'll always defer to superior knowledge, but would a coroner (ie not merely a coroner's officer) really attend a crime scene in England and Wales? (Not the UK, of course, since Scotland has its own legal system.)

Coroner's officers would attend, they are effectively employees of police forces in England and Wales. There are no coroners in Scotland. For realism you will never hear a police officer or member of ambulance personnel refer to a coroner's officer as anything other than "the coroner".

 

[Boneman]

Another book I'm reading at the mo is about what happens when a body is found on a train. Can't actually remember what ended up happening to the body though!

Well, it reached the end of the line, anyway...

BTW, if you're going to use google maps to be incredibly accurate, beware - it don't show one-way streets very often.

 

[Mouse]

I'll bear that in mind, Boneman, ta!

Thanks, Mark, TJ. I don't suppose either of you know what the hotel would have done? Would it close or carry on business as usual?

I've got two murders in two hotels. One a big hotel, one a smaller country one.

I really do have to wear some brighter lipstick, and to hell with the nude look...

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I really do have to wear some brighter lipstick, and to hell with the nude look...

Don't forget the stiletto heels.

 

[The Judge]

I'm already wearing the heels! I'm a lot shorter in real life...


Mouse, I don't know if there are any rules about what the hotel must do -- I think it would be down to the proprietors once the police had finished. (Though I've no idea how long that would take.) My nephew used to work in very posh hotels and his partner was a hotel manager. If I remember, next time I see him I'll ask him if they had any kind of special procedure written down for use in emergencies like that.

 

[Mouse]

Ooh, would you? Thank you very much, TJ!

I've been Googling a bit and found this story: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...st-sleepy-seaside-hotel-womans-body-room.html Which seems to show the time between the murder and the story appearing in the news as two days. If I'm working that out right! Which is good, because I've got a very short time from the murder taking place, to it appearing in the news and I was wondering if it was too quick.

I'm trying to write a timeline at the mo, tis complicated!

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I'm already wearing the heels! I'm a lot shorter in real life...

I think its the avatar, TJ, I was sure you were a bloke for about a month. and don't go for the nude look, it's family friendly round here.

Mouse, on a practical note it's going to depend on the size of the premises and the likelihood of foul play. If it has several entrances and exits then you'll probably find them trading close to normal with a section sealed off. If it's a smaller establishment, it'll be more disruptive.

Also, if the only crimescene is a room that's easier to contain than if it's throughout the hotel.

The bottom line is they'll do their best to trade through it, businesses always do, so I would assume there'll be police,, some cordons etc, but not a closure of the business.

 

[Mouse]

Mouse, on a practical note it's going to depend on the size of the premises and the likelihood of foul play. If it has several entrances and exits then you'll probably find them trading close to normal with a section sealed off. If it's a smaller establishment, it'll be more disruptive.

Also, if the only crimescene is a room that's easier to contain than if it's throughout the hotel.

The bottom line is they'll do their best to trade through it, businesses always do, so I would assume there'll be police,, some cordons etc, but not a closure of the business.

Yeah this is what I thought. You've read the reaction to the murder at the larger hotel in critiques - business as usual.

I've just started writing the murder in the smaller hotel and I've written it as having shut down the hotel for a couple of days.

I worked in a small country hotel (15 rooms when I started, then they had an extension built and added an extra ten rooms) and I'm trying to think what we would've done there. Pretty sure it would've closed.

We had stolen cars in the fields around the hotel being burnt out, and like I said, the silverware stolen, but that was it. And it didn't interrupt anything.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

25 rooms; I think they'd still try to trade. Smaller businesses will suffer more if they close, and unless police specifically tell them to, I doubt if insurance will cover them for loss of business. The show must go on, I suspect.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

I worked in a small country hotel (15 rooms when I started, then they had an extension built and added an extra ten rooms) and I'm trying to think what we would've done there. Pretty sure it would've closed.

We had stolen cars in the fields around the hotel being burnt out, and like I said, the silverware stolen, but that was it. And it didn't interrupt anything.

It wasn't a murder but there was an unexplained death in one of the hotels I worked in as a teen. It had fourteen rooms I think, and five or six of them were in an extension. The death was in the extension which had a seperate entrance/exit. We were able to keep the restaurant/bar open and three people chose to stay in the main part of the hotel.

 

[Mouse]

Thanks, guys!

 

[The Judge]

I think its the avatar, TJ, I was sure you were a bloke for about a month.

She's the Goddess of Justice! She's in a flowing gown! She's wearing a bejewelled coronet! She is not a flaming cross-dresser!

 

[Jo Zebedee]

She's the Goddess of Justice! She's in a flowing gown! She's wearing a bejewelled coronet! She is not a flaming cross-dresser!

Oops A legacy of too much Rocky Horror here, maybe.

 

[slack]

Writing what you know just means writing with unflinching honesty about one's experiences, and the emotions involved. Research is just facts, a way of grounding the story, establishing the dream -- more important is how truthful and observant you are within the world of the story.

 

[Toby Frost]

My own feeling is that you shouldn't write what you are likely to be caught out not knowing, which isn't quite the same thing as only writing what you know. Many people have been divorced: I haven't, and although I have a rough idea of what's involved, it's from the outside, and hence I would be wary of writing about characters experiencing a divorce from the inside. On the other hand, very few people have actually been in a gunfight, and, having read several very convincing accounts of gunfights (real and otherwise), I think I would be able to write one that would seem convincing to all but a few experts. Quite often, I suspect, it's the emotional elements of a novel that feel fake more than the physical ones.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

As an extension of Toby's point, I would say a lot depends on the POV.

If you're writing a detective or a medical person dealing with the body in the hotel, there's a lot more to be caught out on than if you're writing an interested bystander watching the goings-on. One needs details that the other wouldn't even notice or understand.

Sometimes it's the silliest minor detail that throws off your credibility. Last year I read the whole China Bayles series by Susan Wittig Albert (mysteries), and since I know little to nothing about herbs and such, her main focus is perfectly credible to me. But one little thing sticks in my mind long after the rest of that book has been lost to my terrible memory -- a character had a guinea pig that had babies, and they were described as ten or twelve little hairless things with their eyes stuck shut. I happen to know that guinea pigs have only a couple of babies, furry ones, with their eyes open, who start out eating solid food. A tiny bit of research would have uncovered that detail. And that's the thing I remember about that book, which is probably not what the author had in mind.

 

[Gary Compton]

She's the Goddess of Justice! She's in a flowing gown! She's wearing a bejewelled coronet! She is not a flaming cross-dresser!

Our Damaris is as much of a woman as her name suggests, and judging from her photos on her website - a very beautiful one at that.

You can lock me up anytime your honour or even being your man-servant for a month would be so rewarding

Happy New Year TJ

xxx