SAINT MICHAEL'S DAY

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.