Author Mark Bergin’s career as an award-winning crime reporter then police officer spanned nearly 30 years and resulted in him being named Police Officer of the year twice, for drug and robbery investigation. His career also put him in close contact with a difficult and often overlooked issue in American culture: police suicide. Currently, more police officers are lost to suicide than to conflicts in the line of duty. Bergin brings awareness to this weighted issue in his debut work, Apprehension, and plans to donate a portion of his sales directly to the National Police Suicide Foundation and similar programs.

Apprehension tells of the four best and worst days in Alexandria Police Detective John Kelly’s life. Preparing for a pedophile trial to save a young boy, Kelly discovers that a terrible, secret act he committed after his niece was murdered is about to surface. It could mean the end of his career or his freedom. And his girlfriend, the molester’s defense attorney, has a secret, too, one that will destroy Kelly on the witness stand. Crushing challenges and violent horrors rain on Kelly, pushing him to the brink and beyond.

Bergin stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R and researching and wriring Apprehension:

I researched all my life for my first novel, Apprehension. Right up to my death. 

I started writing it more than thirty years ago, during a bad personal and professional patch. I was a police officer on a busy plainclothes drug unit in Alexandria, Virginia, working fifty to sixty hours a week, and another ten or twenty in court (lots of police work equals lots of trials.) I was also going through a divorce, in part because my wife didn't like cops and I had just become one. 

I think personal angst is good for artistic impulse, and I found myself compelled to write several pages of notes for a mystery novel about a cop under stress. Write what you know. I promptly put the notes away and had a successful divorce, followed by a very successful marriage, children, a slower but satisfying career, promotion to a command level and, finally, two heart attacks. I actually died in each, but came back, leading to retirement. 

Suddenly off the force with nothing to do, I pulled out the old notes and began linking together what was essentially a beginning, some disjointed middle bits, and an ending. From the time I was a teenager I had seen writing a book as the peak of creative success. I had been a newspaper reporter for four years before joining the police, but that form of writing seemed far from artistry.

I began thinking of this story in 1988, so its narrative, crisis, and denouement stayed stuck in that time frame. When I picked it up again years later, I had to remind myself about the nuts and bolts of police life back then: what cruisers we drove, what radio identifiers and procedures were in place, how Headquarters was laid out.  But I also wanted to write a timeless novel that cops, especially my former partners, could read and say, "This is how it is, how it was, how it feels to be a police officer." I wanted it to be a novel they could give to family and friends as an example of what some cops go through physically and mentally. 

The truth is that I got most of the details wrong at first. A beta reader and retired Alexandria captain pointed out that we drove Plymouth K-cars in 1988, not Dodge Monacos. A former deputy chief helped me remember the patrol command structure on the street back then. A friend and Veterans Administration social worker gave me articles and advice on stress and PTSD. Very little of it was deliberate research, more like intelligent conversations with smart people who kept me on the right path to accomplish two of my goals: to write a compelling story for the general public and to satisfy my knowledgeable and demanding police audience.

My heart attacks led me to a third goal. Right before surgery I met a nurse who told me my one-hundred percent blockage of the left anterior descending artery was known in the medical field as "The Widowmaker."  She put her hand on my shoulder and said, "You're not supposed to be here anymore. God's got something more for you to do." When I finally began writing, I decided to give the book a greater purpose than just storytelling. I switched up the themes of the book to fully emphasize stress and PTSD and decided I would dedicate half my profits to programs that combat law enforcement suicide. Every year, more cops kill themselves than are killed on the street. In my time with the Alexandria Police Department, one fellow officer was murdered, while three shot themselves to death, and two city deputies also were victims of suicide. Five to one. A higher ratio than the national average, symbolic of a problem much unknown outside the law enforcement profession and mostly unconfronted inside. 

In APPREHENSION, Detective John Kelly prepares for a trial of a pedophile to protect the offender's son and victim but learns his own terrible but hidden act of violence committed last year is about to be discovered. Kelly will lose his job and maybe go to prison, but he can't stop it from surfacing. Meanwhile, the defense attorney in the case is his secret girlfriend, with her own secrets; one she can joyously share with Kelly, the other she must destroy him with in court. Kelly's stress pushes him to a desperate end. 

I hope the book raises awareness of police suicide and some funds to combat it. I hope it can act as a conversation starter among police agencies to help knock down the walls of weakness, shame, and privacy that stop us from seeking help. I also hope folks enjoy the mystery, but that's no longer up to me.

You find out more about Mark Bergin and Apprehension on his website and follow him on Facebook. Apprehension is now available through all major book retailers.