Ed McBain has created the longestrunning series of police novels in the history of American crime fiction. It is also the most successful. Although the series falls into the category of the "police procedural," McBain would bristle at the use of that term. Police series like the 87th Precinct books have a longer tradition abroad than in the United States. The prototype police procedural is unquestionably the Inspector Maigret novels of the prolific Belgian writer Georges Simenon.

Simenon largely created the Roman policier where his inspector works in the police prefecture in Paris along with a set cast of other police inspectors. Like Carella, Maigret is married and readers catch a glimpses of his home life throughout the series.

Simenon also relied heavily on the procedures of the police routine for plotting, although Maigret usually capitalizes more on his intuition than on the dogged formal routine...