James Patterson and Matt Eversmann with Chris Mooney (2023) American Cops.

We all know who James Patterson is. A reminder is on the flyleaf on the inside back cover. He’s ‘one of the best-known and biggest selling writers of all time. His books have sold in excess of 400 million copies.’ You’re probably wondering what that’s got to do with American cops. Do a little detective work. You might not know (like me) who Matt Eversmann and Chris Mooney are, but it doesn’t really matter, their association with James Patterson ensures their book is successful. James Patterson doesn’t even have to write books now. He can just wave his golden pen over it like Merlin over King Arthur, but he might call it editing.

Would you take the James Patterson deal? Your name in subscript? Paid far less even though you do all the work? Most of us writers would. I’ve been asking around trying to find out how to sell books. I’ve got various answers. None of them that promising. Patterson offers job security.

A bit like an American Cop’s job.  Three sections:  Protect Part 1, Serve Part 2, and Defend Part 3. I can’t really tell any difference between the sections. If I opened the account of a police office in Part 1 and read a different account in Part 3, they blur. I’d add in a good way. These are a variety of cops of different colour, gender, status, many of them seemingly suffering from PTSD, doing their best and trying to get through the day. They remind us that very few of them are corrupt. Almost all joined the police for high-sounding reasons, which despite the drag of reality, they found to be true. (A self-selecting bias at work here.)

Jake, for example. He works in a sheriff’s office in the South.  

‘It’s day one of SWAT training, which is, without doubt, the single hardest challenge I’ve ever faced.

Then there’s Mitchell Wido, a veteran of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (AFT).

His first story is about a stake-out with a special agent working undercover to buy drugs. It got messy and the special agent was lucky to be still alive. You hear lots about luck in this book, the bullet that had your name on it.

But Wido was called upon to help out after the Columbine shootings that some right-wing-Trumpian-media outlets called a hoax.

‘I stare down a long row of black zipped bags each holding someone’s kid. Out of respect for the families, we placed the bodies of the shooters, Klebold and Harris, on the other side of the staging area, away from where we gathered their victims.’

Respect is another big word in this book. The cops want acknowledged as doing a difficult job. Not demonised and spat upon.

‘The chaplain says a prayer over each of the victims. Someone asks if he’s going to do the same for the shooters.

“No,’ the chaplain says. “God can say prayers for these two if He wants. I’m not going to do it.’

Ambulances are brought in to take the body bags away. But again, the bodies of Klebold and Harris are left to last, and not allowed to travel with the other bodies.

Wido gets on with the job at hand. He turns up for work. He gets on with it. Only when watching a movie about Columbine…does Wido understand he’s been carrying this thing called PTSD and acknowledges he needs to get help.

One veteran says he knew one cop killed by the bad guys, but four others that killed themselves.

James Patterson has commissioned other writers to write a book about what it’s like to be an American Cop. On the cover, the authors remind the reader: ‘What they see in a day, we’ll never see in a lifetime.’ ‘True stories from the frontline.’ Indeed and quite interesting. Read on.