Over the course of four bad days, a good cop finds everything he holds dear at risk in this debut novel.

John Kelly, an eight-year veteran of the Alexandria, Virginia, police force, has been in something of a downward spiral over the past year since Emma, his niece, was slaughtered in front of him by a man named Edward Falkner. The killer would later die in prison, robbing Kelly of closure in the case. Haunted by his inability to protect Emma, and shunned by his embittered brother, Kelly is now estranged from his wife, Janet, and bound for divorce. “He felt good only because he was a cop,” Janet tells one of his colleagues. “But less lately.” How much less? Kelly counts the ways, including the unraveling of a seemingly open-and-shut parental abduction case in which the father was going to sell his 8-year-old son to a pedophile. Also in jeopardy: Kelly’s new and redemptive romantic relationship with an assistant public defender. Most critically, a reckless and shocking act of violence could have repercussions in a possibly related infant rape case and send him to prison. Kelly is the compelling “A” story, but this tale expands Crash-like to interweave subplots, including a veteran patrolman teaching a recruit in training the facts of cop life, and a case focusing on a teenage drug dealer who believes voodoo will set him free. There’s also a female officer to whom what happens after she is involved in a justified shooting is a real crime. Bergin, a former reporter and a policeman, writes with authority and empathy about cops. He flirts with cliché but doesn’t fully step over the line. The bureaucratic red tape and legal obfuscations are maddening. “Are you in Disneyworld?” an attorney for the city tells Kelly. “We don’t tell the truth in court. We tell little bits we are allowed to. We tell snippets that we can get away with, that are admissible, that are connected. We avoid things that are inflammatory or suggestive because they could be considered unfair.” While there are a few typos (for example, “hadgun” instead of handgun), these are minor infractions.

A gritty and authentic new voice in police fiction.

Bergin continues his police procedural series about a tough cop in Alexandria, Virginia.

Police officer John Kelly is tasked with regular law enforcement work: he responds to calls from dispatch, testifies in court, and is responsible for on-the-job training for recruit officer Niki Dorsey. When Kelly and Niki chase after a van believed to be involved in a robbery, a 15-year-old in the vehicle opens fire with a Tommy gun, and Kelly’s survival of the incident is nothing short of a miracle—some even see it as a sign from God. Meanwhile, Kelly’s wife, public defender Rachel Cohen, has her hands full with a difficult client. Rachel is tasked with defending a man named Zachariya Mousawa who is charged with murder; Zachariya seems to not only hate Rachel, but pretty much everyone else too. The reader learns more about the boy with the Tommy gun: The lad (actually named Tommy) attends a Catholic school where Kelly’s former priest, Tim Burton, is the assistant principal. Although his confederates in the heist come from stable backgrounds, Tommy’s homelife is a little more complicated (for one thing, his stepmother is involved in pornography). As the plot progresses, the paths of Kelly and Tommy (and several others) inevitably converge. The narrative incorporates realistic details of police work, walking the reader through the procedure the police follow when finding a potential murder victim (right down to a doctor at the morgue pronouncing the person dead). In other scenes, characters discuss such technical matters as the logistical factors involved in closing a highway so that an investigation of a shooting can take place. While the dialogue can lean into cliched cop-talk (Kelly says things like “Stuff happens quick, Niki. You just do what comes up”), the narrative supplies plenty of thoughtful material that readers may not expect.

The trappings are familiar, but this work is much more than the average crime drama.