It’s a treat to have Mark Bergin on the blog today.
Mark graduated from Boston University with a degree in
journalism, then worked four years as a newspaper reporter, winning the
Virginia Press Association Award for general news reporting. Joining the
Alexandria VA Police Department seemed the next logical choice, in 1986. Twice
named Police Officer of the Year for narcotics and robbery investigations, he rose
to the rank of Lieutenant. His debut novel, Apprehension,
draws on many of those experiences.
Mark lives in Alexandria and Kitty Hawk, North Carolina (Bi-i-i-ig
fucking house) with his wife Ruth, an attorney and former public defender. They
have two children. Write him at berginwriter@gmail.com or follow his blog at
markberginwriter.com
One Bite at a Time:
Mark, thanks for stopping by for a chat. It’s a pleasure to have you here and I
hope we can expose some readers to your new book. It’s titled Apprehension, and it drops
this month from Inkshares. Tease us a little.
Mark Bergin: It’s
the story of the four best and worst days of Detective
OBAAT: The word “apprehension”
can be taken more than one way. For our purposes here the two possible meanings
that come to mind are “anticipation of adversity or misfortune” or “the act of
arresting; seizure” come to mind. Was this ambiguousness in the title
intentional?
MB: Absolutely.
I’ve called it Apprehension since I
began thinking about it. I actually started making notes for it thirty years
ago. Police work is good and bad, terribly stressful and grinding, but fun as
hell when you get going. The theme of the book is stress and police suicide,
but the goal of law enforcement is stopping bad guys. So I get a double out of
the title. I want folks to take it both ways. The follow-up novel is called “St.
Michael’s Day,” maybe easier to grasp.
OBAAT: Not that
I’m arguing your bona fides, but what’s your background in law enforcement?
MB: I joined the
Alexandria, Virginia Police Department in 1986 after four years as a newspaper
reporter in Virginia and in suburban Philadelphia, PA, where I grew up. I’d
always liked cops and police work, but didn’t care for the cops at home. In the
60s and 70s, it seemed like you had to be a former MP who hated black people
and took bribes to be a city cop. I hate to admit that, my own myopia, but it
wasn’t till I got to Alexandria and began closely reporting on cops and
detectives, riding along or sitting in trials with them, that I realized they
were normal, decent, intelligent people. I thought I was, too, so I applied and
got hired.
I spent 28 years on, as a patrol officer, street-level
narcotics “jump-out,” field training officer, sergeant, and lieutenant.
Twenty-seven years on the street, then I got command of the Records Section, and
temporary command of Public Information. Desk jobs, heavy on administrative
paperwork and computer entry. Where I had two heart attacks, died, actually,
and had to retire. The desk jobs did it. But that gave me the chance to start
writing, go back to the notes I’d made 30 years ago, that had a beginning and
an end and some middle stuff, but that I hadn’t touched since then. Five years
later, here we are.
OBAAT: As a
career law enforcement officer you must be a tough audience for procedural
writers. Who do you read, or do you stay away from the genre altogether, as I
know many folks close to a profession tend to.
MB: Don Winslow
is very good, very popular and gets it right. I like Bruce Coffin in Maine, and
Brenda Buchanan, also in Maine, writes accurately about newspaper reporting. Some
kind of Maine thing going, there. Michael Connelly writes cops, lawyers and
reporters well and, since my wife is a lawyer I know he knows. Archer Meyer is
an unappreciated police proceduralist, I enjoy his plots and he gets details
right. Another strong police proceduralist is this guy Dana King – dead on in
describing how cops think and work, and the details and humanity of small town
Pennsylvania where I was bread and buttered. Penns River isn’t my hometown but
I’ve sure spent a lot of time there. The god of this police procedural biz has
to be Joseph Wambaugh, and I’ve read everything he wrote. When I knew I had to retire
and I decided I wanted to write, I reread certain books by my favorite authors
to stir up the creative brain. Alistair MacLean, Elmore Leonard, Adam Hall,
John D. McDonald, George V. Higgins. I deliberately avoided rereading Wambaugh,
because I knew my book would be similar to his and didn’t want to copy him.
Alistair MacLean I’d copy till the cows come home. David Swinson, a former DC
detective, has become a master of police noir, bad but redeemable cops who try
to do good. Craig Johnson and C. J. Box are Western writers who make it seem
effortless and clean, especially now that I’ve learned now just how hard it is
to put the words down in the right order.
OBAAT: How much
of your experience is in Apprehension?
Not to say John Kelly stands in for you, but either direct or indirect
experiences that affected the book.
MB: It’s all real
but it may not be all true. I tried to write a book that my fellow officers
could read and say, he got it right. That they could give to their families and
say, this is how it is. I certainly took my experiences of how cops think and
react to craft scenes and events. “Wart Lip” is a true story. The shotgun
suicide happened. And we did have a witch doctor in Alexandria. The magnets are
made up but we thought about using them. Most of the rest could have happened. I
know the stress is real, and grinding and feels inescapable, so I’m giving half
my book profits to programs that combat police suicide. Might be only
seventy-five or eighty dollars. We’ll see.
OBAAT: Who are
your greatest influences as a writer?
MB: George V.
Higgins, who wrote The Friends of Eddie
Coyle, is definitely my muse. He could write whole chapters of his crime
stories in dialogue, and only in the last paragraph insert whatever it is that
moved the plot along. Elmore Leonard puts folks in normal places but sets off
explosions around them. James Lee Burke puts naked souls on the page and they
bleed on you. Alistair MacLean is my favorite writer, and his The Secret Ways is my favorite book, but
I don’t write adventure. Yet.
OBAAT: We ran
into each other a while back at a James Ellroy event. Ellroy doesn’t provide
the most flattering depictions of cops. What’s the appeal to you, or do you
like him in spite of how he writes law enforcement?
MB: I’ve carried
around an original copy of his first book, Brown’s
Requiem since it was published in 1981. Only just reread it prepping for that
event. His hero is another flawed, former cop like Swinson’s. But the clarity
of voice, the constant, subtle but strong emotional tone of challenge and
despair, the picture of 80s Los Angeles, stayed with me all that time. I didn’t
remember the details but I always felt the impact. Ellroy was gracious and
signed it, though he was there to plug his newest. He wrote, “Did this move
you?” What a great, laser beam question. Yes. In this and later books he
clobbers cops, and I take that as the literary tool he needs to tell the story.
C. J. Box always includes inept or evil cops in his Joe Pickett novels. I asked
him why, and whether he had bad experiences with police. He paused a sec, like
he was trying to come up with the right answer, then said, “It’s just for
dramatic tension.” Okay.
OBAAT: What are
you working on now?
MB: “St.
Michael’s Day.” It is another novel about police, but it’s also about faith. What
if you survived a horrendous, nearly fatal machine gun attack, and the people
around you decided you were blessed, protected, specifically saved and
empowered by God? And what if you weren’t sure you believed in a God who did
that, but tried to reckon out your feelings while investigating a case and
looking for your own shooters? I have been thinking of this one, and themes of
faith, almost as long as Apprehension.
Apprehension started as an
examination of what it was like to be a squad of white cops who arrested mostly
black people, because that’s the reality of 1980s drug enforcement in big
cities. It was for me, I was there, lived and worked it and wondered, was it
racist or the real and unavoidable result of racial and economic splits in
society? Those elements are still part of Apprehension
but fell back in the examination of stress and suicide. I tried to use writing
the book to come to grips with my own concerns. The next one, “St. Michael’s
Day,” is my attempt to understand my own faith, or lack of strong and clear
faith. It won’t be preachy. I put faithful and faithless Christians, Jews,
Sikhs, Hindi, Muslims and atheists in a pot and turn the heat on. I won’t kill
a cop in my books, that’s too easy a literary device, and too painful to write,
though I do shoot one in book three. I hate serial killer books, but one just
showed up in “St. Michael’s Day.” Popped up on the page. Funny how that
happens.
(Editor’s Note: I hope you enjoyed this, as Mark will; be
back. There’s lots more I have to talk with him about.)
