Hiya Uncles Oldduke and Art,

I remember the Frank Ballinger character from the M-squad with the indestructible Lee Marvin in reruns or on rented video. Some time ago. I like the noir quality about it a bit. But it was not so noir.

I'd also seen a host of tv shows that would have a tv reporter or producer who would have a car that is wholly checked up for faults by what is touted as an honest mechanic or a AAA auto repair service. They may set a fault by leaving a vacuum hose unplugged, so it runs bad, or a fuse is blown. Then with hidden cameras the car is taken to some repair chain or some what notorious independent repair shop or a the stealership repair center.

More time than not the repair service is a shyster saying how bad something ir, or will be, or will recommend service that's not needed.

Yet occasionally, a repair service is honest, says nothing wrong, or plugs the vacuum hose back in without any charge.

Then the cameras and reporter show up at the shyster repair place and confront them. I guess.

You want to write a book that details people's experiences of being ripped off, Uncle oldduke? And Uncle Art would be the model for the protagonist character that sleuths out the shysters, saving the innocent from wrong and loss?

Like these autos we like, I much prefer the aesthetic of the crime fiction from Europa. The more modern American police procedural are boorish, now. I mean, Dragnet, ADAM-12, and Emergency! (fire and rescue), and the like, all document, more factually, the procedure in getting the bad guy or preventing something from happening.

As for the Europa aesthetic, in fiction, they may be also procedural yet character and dialogue drive the narrative. More smart, thoughtful, waaaaaaaaay less violent and gun toting.

I guess the very best example easily viewed are the various incarnations of the Wallander series (from Sweden, like the Volvo 240, 164, 122, 544, 940 ....).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Wallander

The Swedish author wrote the books, which became a Swedish film series, and a Swedish and eventual television series by the BBC that was broadcast in goofy 'Merika on PBS.

One of many examples. The better refactored to the film or tv media come from books written in those nations. Yet after 2001, not as good with exception. Some Wallander books were authored after 2001 yet escape the distasteful qualities one may find in a modern police drama; certainly in the Yoo Ess Aaaaayyyyy.

I can't think of the authors, now, or the productions. Yet they are all over Nordica and a few from the Baltic Republic that capture the cold war era, and related crime, and added burden of the cold war, on sovereign nation in Scandinavia and an actual added burden to policing. You have spy versus spy like with western and eastern boot prints back and forth. Both the west and east worked with crime networks, or created crime networks, to further their intelligence gathering or to disrupt and create confusion and havoc. Though well documented at the west v east spy versus spy, how the nations and their agencies suffered, like say in Finland and Estonia (even as they were an SSR), or how they took a part, is less publicized, though reflected in fiction.

I can imagine seeing short story drama of uncovering shysterism at the auto repair facility as they may be repeat offenders. Perhaps they service fleet vehicles while receiving public monies. Some are injured or the defective vehicles some how cause a problem that is an outcome of the crime.

Though I guess you are interested in characterizing, or profiling the crime of planned poor auto service, or performing unneeded repair, to the unsuspecting. You want your work to be instructional and informative so as to educate the those so unsuspecting?

I had hope, a long time ago, to see about writing a crime drama, of a noir quality, set in the upper Midwest, which may be presented very well in written and broadcast form, using the same crime drama methods you read or see in Scandia and Northern Europa.

Yet FOX or NBC gave us an adaption in the form of Backstrom with Rainn Wilson. Ugh. The original work was by:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leif_G._W._Persson

Was not a comedy.

Nothing like the original few books. Not enough for a series. Yet pull the genre together will a homogenization of elements, you may have something. Set in the upper midwest, maybe overlap with Canada as some crime genres (and organizations) overlap a variety of boundaries and borders, who knows.

The protagonist would drive his Volvo, and as a meditation method, care for the Volvos he has himself. As you see in the two Wallander series, he drives a a new or very recent Volvo, which is common where he is. So, somehow, if in the upper midwest USA, the RWD Volvo would need be unique and ubiquitous. Does not drive even an unmarked police car as they all drive dodge chargers now or Ford interceptors. (Versus the police cars in the 1980s when i dreamed this crap up.) Only when he utterly must by mandate and law.

Of course, I wish we had more Rumpole of the Bailey, yet without Leo McKern, impossible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumpole_of_the_Bailey

Woops, went on so. Welp, there you go.

Hangin' Out down by the Brickboard.com on a Sat-Your-Day night in smelly and nasty St. Louis, MO. Back to Goofy, WA? Western WA.
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