Screenwriting: Solving the Mystery of the Defective Detective

It seems essential for many fictional detectives to have insurmountable personal issues and challenges. But why?

A couple of years ago, visionary director Marcus Nispel suggested I adapt a true-crime story from the mid-80s. His primary rationale was that I understood the world the story is set in better than most writers; the fact I had zero experience writing crime was irrelevant to him (but not to me). Even though I remembered the case vividly—and was throughly …