An Interview with Bernard Schaffer by E. B. Davis

“Is it normal to have to manipulate the people in charge just to get anything done?”

Rein set the packet of papers on the floor behind Carrie’s seat. “To be a detective

means knowing what people want and using it to your advantage. If you read a person

correctly, you learn how to exploit them. It’s only natural.”

Rein leaned back and closed his eyes, resting while he could. “The only

people better at it than us are the maniacs we chase after.”

Bernard Schaffer, Blood Angel, Kindle Loc. 2958

A detective and a manhunter team up against a madman in this “tense, fast, and excellent” series by the veteran cop and author of An Unsettled Grave (Lee Child, bestselling author of the Jack Reacher series).

Fifteen years ago, a deranged young man abducted a teenage girl in a parking lot. He chose her for her innocence. Then he punished her for her beauty. Then he dowsed her with gasoline and tried to purify her with fire. Det. Jacob Rein managed to stop the lunatic before it was too late. But now the girl who survived that horrible ordeal has been found dead of an apparent suicide. Near her body is a letter from “The Master”—a blood-chilling promise to finish what he started.

About to be released from the mental facility, The Master has chosen new objects of his twisted desire—all of whom are dear to Det. Carrie Santero. Carrie reaches out to Jacob, the one man who understands the depths of The Master’s psychosis. He knows that the only way to anticipate The Master’s next move is to enter his delusions, indulge his obsessions, and follow his lead to the very edge of madness.

Amazon.com

Bernard Schaffer’s Santero and Rein Thriller series focuses on the crimes of those lost in criminal psychosis. For me, the book was hard to read because of the violence wrought on the victims, but there are fans of this genre who will love this series. Blood Angel is the third in this series released by Kensington Press on May 26.

What I do love about Schaffer’s series are his characterizations of the police detectives featured. Their unique personalities come through during the intense crime scenes they investigate. You will root for them, hoping they save the lives of targeted people, victims of the deranged.

Please welcome Bernard Schaffer back to WWK. Here’s a link to his first WWK interview.                                                                                                   E. B. Davis

Reading your books is enough to make a normal person paranoid. What percentage of the population do your perpetrators comprise?

Thank you so much for having me back. I truly appreciate your site.

I'm not certain of the actual percentage of full-blown serial homicidal maniacs to the general population. I don't know if anyone actually knows that. It's much smaller than what you'd see on television or read about in fictional thrillers. You can't throw a rock without hitting some new kind of serial killer in those.

Waylon and Rein were partners fifteen years ago. They usually disagreed, yet they cover each other’s backs years later. Why would Waylon volunteer to be Rein’s partner when no one else wants to be? Why does Rein treat Waylon harshly? Do they balance each other?

I think anyone who's ever had a quirky friend or tumultuous relationship with someone difficult can understand that sometimes, you're just stuck with certain people. It's especially true in the police world, where you form deep, long-lasting bonds that go beyond friendship. You share things with a partner at work as a detective that no one else will ever understand.

Rein talks about two cases: Anton LaVey and Dean Corll. Are either cases true or did you make them up?

Both Anton LaVey and Dean Corll were real people. LaVey wasn't a case, necessarily. He was the founder of the Church of Satan and would routinely appear on talk shows and scare the bajeezus out of Middle America, but that's about it. Rein's comments in the book that mainstream Satanism is essentially an exercise in satire reflect my opinion of it as well.

Dean Corll is a different matter. He was a serial killer.

I thought all cop cars had disabled overhead lights. Don’t they?

There's no such thing as "all cop cars," unfortunately. They're all different models, brands, years, etc. When it comes to undercover cars, they're just regular cars that sometimes have a radio or rudimentary lighting installed.

Rein’s behavior can be outrageous. When interviewing a hysterical mother, whose child has been abducted, he shakes her. How does he get away with this behavior?

Because in that case, it was necessary. Rein's the kind to get a result now and deal with the consequences later. In that matter, he needed to find an abducted girl and the mother was in a state of hysteria. Obviously, he pays a big price for his behavior throughout the course of his life.

Tucker Pennington is a juvenile who maims and attempts to kill young women. He’s locked into a psychiatric hospital. Who is the female doctor with long black hair and green eyes with cat-eyed glasses? Is she his hallucination?

I think that's best left up to the reader to decide.

Note that when she speaks, there are no quotation marks.

In Blood Angel, psychiatric criminals are released from hospitals due to budget cuts. What do you think of prisoners being released due to the Covid-19 virus?

From what I can tell, they are careful in their selection of who is being released. At least in Pennsylvania, where I live. I can't speak to what's going on in any other parts of the country, but I know here they are taking steps to make sure no one is released who is a threat to the community.

What does “Civil Commitment” mean?

It's explained in the book, as far as what it means to the story. In real life, it's where a person is no longer serving a prison sentence, but they are too mentally ill to release to the general public.

Bubba and Zeke are gun dealers, who you portray as right-wing hicks. Carrie stops by their gun shop to ask directions. Bubba shows her a gun with a laser sight mounted underneath. She shies away from it, but then later produces a weapon very similar to it. Did she go back and buy it? (I would have knowing what she knows!)

Well, it's either that or she stole it, I guess. I'm pretty sure Carrie took a look at what they were up against and decided to go back and get herself some extra firepower. I agree with you. I would have too.

Two years ago, Carrie and a child were abducted. Waylon and Rein saved them, but in the process Waylon’s throat was cut, not enough to kill him, but enough to permanently disable him. How was he treated by his department? Is this typical?

My work is really just fiction. I don't base it on my career in law enforcement. There are no hidden messages about real-life incidents.

Most of the abusers/perpetrators were abused as children. Tucker Pennington is characterized as the son of a wealthy realtor. Was he abused? Parents or priest?

I subscribe to the Hemingway Iceberg Theory. It's what the author doesn't tell you that counts. Once a book is released it goes out into the world and everyone gets to come at it their own way. Some people will see different things in Tucker's backstory, and in their own way, each of them is correct.

How do Dr. Linda Shelley and Rein meet? Why is Rein there? What are their professional differences?

They meet in prison while Rein is serving his prison sentence for events that took place prior to The Thief of All Light.

Why does Linda hold Carrie responsible for what happened to Rein?

I'd hate to put words in Linda's mouth. She isn't shy about letting Carrie know.

Statistically, why is the most likely place for a serial killer to be found is lurking by a Walmart in Florida?

I don't think that's an actual statistic. Just more of a given. Walmarts tend to be associated with certain crimes just because they're usually open twenty-four hours, carry a wide variety of merchandise, and people can park their cars there for extended periods of time. It's probably a matter of convenience.

As far as Florida goes, well, if you had to pick a place for crazy to happen, and there was money on the line, you can't go wrong picking that state.

What were the experiments done on black soldiers at Tuskegee in WWII?

I'm no expert on what occurred there. I have only read the same material everyone else has. Essentially, the American government experimented on unwitting African American citizens for forty years.

Is there such a thing as volunteer police? Is that the situation that just happened in Georgia?

There are multiple agencies who use volunteer police to varying extents. I have no idea what happened in Georgia beyond what appeared on the news. 

Are judges and DAs exempt from law suits but not cops?

In Pennsylvania that's the case. I'm not sure what laws they have in other states.

When deer bucks fight and get their antlers entangled, can they really pop each other’s heads off?

Sure. I think generally it's when one perishes during the fight but they are still stuck together and the other one has to choose between staying there and starving to death or finding a way to escape. There are photographs online if you really want to see. Tread carefully though.

How does particulate matter composed of flour and sugar cause a flash explosion?

I'm not sure about the exact formula and if I was, I wouldn't say. For all I know, I'm wrong about the percentage of serial killers out there and there is some homicidal baker just waiting for that info!

What’s next for Santero and Rein?

Well, Blood Angel is the third in the series and that will be out in hardcover, eBook, and audiobook on 5/31/20. It will come out in paperback in the summer of 2021.

At the moment I'm writing a western series for Berkley. The first one, Face Of A Snake, will be out next year and we have two more after that.

Honestly, Blood Angel may be my final thriller. I had a tremendous editor in Michaela Hamilton, and with her guidance, we created a series where each book improved on the other and was never in danger of repeating anything.

The Santero and Rein series says everything I ever needed to say about police work. It reveals the impact of a life spent dealing with the worst in humanity. It talks about sacrifice and redemption, and in the end, I think it talks about love.

I'm not sure I'll ever feel the need to come back and elaborate on what The Thief of All Light, An Unsettled Grave, and Blood Angel, offer. For now, I'm exploring the old west. After that, who knows? Maybe I'll write a cookbook or medieval poetry or something.

An Interview with Bernard Schaffer by E. B. Davis

In this brilliantly chilling follow-up to The Thief of All Light, veteran police officer Bernard Schaffer digs deep into the past—and the haunted psyches of the detectives who search for truth . . . at any cost.

 “There’s a thousand scavengers in these woods.”

Before being promoted to detective, Carrie Santero was given a rare glimpse into the mind of a killer. Through her mentor, Jacob Rein—a seasoned manhunter whose gift for plumbing the depths of madness nearly drove him over the brink—she was able to help capture one of the most depraved serial killers in the country. Now, the discovery of a small human foot buried in the Pennsylvania woods will lead her to a decades-old cold case—and the darkest secrets of her mentor’s youth.

“Nobody trusts an animal that tries to eat its own kind.”

Thirty years ago, a young girl went missing. A police officer was murdered. Another committed suicide. The lives of everyone involved would never be the same. For three agonizing decades, Jacob Rein has yearned for the truth. But when Detective Carrie Santero begins digging up new evidence, she discovers some answers come with shattering consequences.

Amazon .com

I don’t know why I downloaded this book. It isn’t really my go-to read. It sure isn’t cozy. But I was hooked as soon as I started reading. An Unsettled Grave is the second book in the Santero and Rein Thriller series. That word, “thriller,” usually turns me off. To me, it defines the reader as someone who has to get vicarious thrills, like a bystander at a traffic accident. So not me. But the reader is drawn into this story, not sidelined to bystander status at all.

Perhaps it’s due to the main character being a young female detective. Carrie Santero has her job to do, but as the only female detective on the county’s force, it’s an uphill battle doing her job without ticking off her boss, whose ego might interfere with his brain function, or the rest of her colleagues. Perhaps it’s because Jacob Rein’s life and family played an integral part in the case. Perhaps it’s because Schaffer pulls the reader back thirty years to when the cold case started.

After reading this book, what did I really wish for? That I’d found out about the first book before I read this one. There’s an interesting backstory and beginning to this series that I know I missed out on. So, I’ll pack The Thief of All Light for beach reading soon.

Please welcome Bernard Schaffer to WWK.                                                                                                         E. B. Davis

Preamble Questions:

Before we get into the book, I want to satiate my curiosity. You’ve written a lot of books from children’s books to nonfiction police procedure. When did you start to write?

At a very early age. I was a voracious reader and that’s where it starts for any author. You love to read and at some point, you decide to try creating stories of your own.

My first efforts at getting published were between high school and becoming a police officer. In those days I was strictly a short story and comic book script writer. I didn’t have the confidence to try anything more substantial.

I had this big electric typewriter I used to lug around to various dead-end security jobs. One was at a trash dump, and I’d sit in the security office at night writing while rats raced past the windows.

I was so broke at the time that I used to type on both sides of the pages to save money on paper. This was back in the old days where you did everything by mail and had to wait six months to know if you’d been rejected or not. It was a nightmare.

So I kept writing but ultimately the impending threat of starving to death and living on the streets convinced me to get a real job. Getting married and having two kids convinced me to keep it.

In 2010 my ex-wife and I separated and to keep from going crazy, I decided to do something I’d never done before. Write a novel. That was Whitechapel.

As a full-time police detective, how do you have time to write? Is writing therapy?

I’ve written in police cars at four AM. I've written in trash dumps. I write now when I’m getting into bed exhausted after a long day, but then am suddenly struck with such a perfect piece of prose that I have to get back up and stagger toward my computer. The point is, a writer finds time to get it in.

I'm no different than those who came before me. Elmore Leonard used to write inside a desk drawer at a crappy office job, until they caught him and fired him for doing it on company time. Harlan Ellison used to write in the toilet stall while he was in boot camp. Stephen King used to write in the laundry room with his typewriter balanced on a bucket, or something.

As far as whether or not writing is therapy, I’m not sure. It’s just who I am. Writers write for various reasons. To fight back against the darkness. To expel their demons. To make money. To preserve literature. To show the world they're the best of their time. Maybe I do it for all of those reasons and maybe none. I think therefore I am, and I am therefore I write.

How did you get endorsements from writers such as Lee Child, Lisa Scottoline, JA Konrath, Meg Gardiner?

Getting blurbs is one of the worst things. It’s really humiliating to have to approach established authors and go through the whole begging process. Some make it easy and some don’t.

Lee Child is an incredible guy who is incredibly generous. I met him at my first Thrillerfest and then got in contact with him later. He agreed right away and gave us such a great blurb they used it on the cover of The Thief of All Light.

I’d worked with Joe Konrath before. I spent six years in the indie world and Joe and I crossed paths and co-wrote some pieces together. Joe actually introduced me to his agent, who then became my agent, and now we share a publisher in Kensington. That was pretty easy. Joe has made a second career out of guiding others through the indie publishing world.

Lisa Scottoline is the Queen of Thrillers. I love that lady. She’s from my area and when I met her she beat me to punch and said, “Do you need a blurb?” We stay in touch and see each other at conferences. I really love Miss S as a person and as an author.  

The craziest story is David Morrell.

He not only gave us a great blurb, he suggested we change the entire ending to THE THIEF OF ALL LIGHT. I laughed and said yeah, okay. The book is done. It’s edited and we got our final payment and it’s on its way to the printer. My editor, Michaela Hamilton, wasn’t laughing.

Needless to say, we changed the ending. And David Morrell was right.

An Unsettled Grave Questions:

When Carrie was still in uniform, she made more money than now as a detective. Isn’t being a detective a promotion?

Not always. In some departments it’s a promotion, in others it’s an assignment that can be taken away at any moment. That’s happened to me.

In Carrie’s case, she isn’t promoted to detective. She leaves her agency and goes to work for the county and has to start over in terms of their pay scale and seniority and whatnot.

When a young woman driving home from the gym is pulled over and raped by a man who identified himself as a cop, Carrie asks the officers on road patrol to submit DNA. Her boss, Harv Bender, immediately pulls her off the case and sends her to the boonies to investigate what looks like a dead-end cold case. Wouldn’t asking for DNA for elimination be a standard response and procedure? I know from the quote above, “Nobody trusts an animal that tries to eat its own kind.” But what if a cop is responsible? Getting a bad cop out of the job should be a priority, shouldn’t it?

It should be. If I came to your house right now and said, hi, I’m from the government and we want your DNA maybe you’d give it and maybe you wouldn’t. Cops tend to react poorly when it’s suggested they’ve done something wrong. There's a herd mentality. Part of the reason is, cops all over the nation are punished when a cop in some distant part of the country does something wrong.

How many times have you seen people protesting in New York for something that happened on the west coast or the south, and the cops wind up getting hit with bottles and rocks and everything else? I'm not here to say what's right or wrong about it. I'm just saying, everything evolves over time, including that mentality.

Carrie defines patrol officers into two groups: Road dogs and traffic cops. What are they? What’s the difference? And are these groups real? Are the differences due to individual temperament or are the differences cultivated by the supervisor/county directives?

Every police agency has its own culture. Bucks County, where I work, has over 50 different departments. Different bosses, procedures, sizes, and cultures.

Carrie’s observation about those groups is consistent with my own.

Some guys get a perverted thrill out of wrecking some blue-collar worker’s life with six hundred dollars in traffic tickets. Some guys don’t.

What is a SANE nurse?

A Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner. They are trained to forensically exam victims of sex assaults and secure evidence.

What is Blue Flu? Is it real?

It’s a situation where cops protest by sicking out and not showing up for work. It can really wreak havoc, especially if a department doesn’t have the resources to cover the open shifts. If your entire nightwork shift calls out sick, especially a few nights in a row, you could have a real problem on your hands. It doesn’t happen often. Police officers are generally a very dedicated and professional group. But it has happened.

I’ve seen those “We Buy Gold” shops. How do they feed off the heroin trade?

Mainly just by existing. They allow anyone to walk in and sell jewelry and don’t ask any questions. Heroin addicts need a constant supply of heroin, so they need a constant source of money.

Those gold places melt the gold almost immediately so it’s not like victims can go and look for their missing items. Priceless family heirlooms. Rings an elderly woman was given by husband decades ago in Paris. All of it sold for pennies and melted into scrap for dope money.

Having not read the first book, I assume Jacob Rein has been either let go or is on administrative leave from the force. Why do he and Carrie stay in touch?

They have an experience in TOAL that binds them together. Rein is her mentor and maybe also a warning of what happens if she lets the job consume her.

Vieira County, which I assume is fictional, is located somewhere in southwestern Pennsylvania, but its jurisdiction extends into parts of West Virginia and Ohio by “agreement.” Is that true? Sometimes legal jurisdiction doesn’t follow state lines?

There are agreements of mutual aid that let agencies share borders, so a bad guy can’t just step over the state line and start mooning the cops chasing him. Those other states are just the PA border in that area.

When Carrie finds the old case files buried in the police station’s basement safe, she doesn’t have the equipment or chemicals to analyze it. Rein encourages her to do it herself. Is it true that there is only one police lab in Pennsylvania? What does Carrie have to do to analyze the evidence?

There is only the PA State Police crime lab in that area for specific types of examinations. They have various satellite offices around the state that do different things. DNA, fingerprints, and whatnot. Philly has its own lab. I’m not sure if Pittsburgh does also. And there are several private labs for DNA, blood evidence and analysis. But none of them work together and you need the PSP lab for almost every major case.

Curiously, Carrie discovers the police chief, who was the original investigator of the case, is named Oliver Rein. She finds a subsequent letter from a new police chief, Walter C. Auburn, writing about Oliver Rein’s suicide, but Auburn’s death date is the same date as on the letter. What does Carrie think about that?

I think that’s for the reader to infer. I’m an adherent to Hemingway’s iceberg theory. The more I stay out of the way of the author, the more the reader has to bring the character forward on their own.

Why does Carrie hate illusions, especially those created by people?

One of the themes that developed while I was writing the book was the difference between the genuine and artificial. What we perceive and subscribe to versus what actually occurred. In the book you see that the town throws an annual parade for a dead police chief, who Carrie later learns, wasn't the hero everyone thinks. She has to decide whether or not to preserve and use that illusion for her own ends, which just happens to be the greater good.

Jacob’s father Ben suffers from PTSD after coming home from Vietnam. What motivates him to compartmentalize, switch it off, and go into soldier mode?

I’d have a hard time explaining that without spoiling the book for people, I think. I can only speak from my own experiences with PTSD. From what I've heard, it's likely my grandfather had PTSD from WWII and raised my father in a very violent way. My dad likely also has PTSD, both from his upbringing and the almost thirty years as a police officer.

I've probably experienced it as well. For a long time, I experienced Exploding Head Syndrome, which is an amusing sounding condition, but freaked me out until I finally started asking questions about it.

Like most things, it went away after I learned what it was. It doesn't bother me anymore.

Why are police badges designed to look like shields?

Legend has it that they are shaped like the shields of soldiers in ancient times because it was their job to protect the people. It's a symbol that you can stand behind me when the bad guys come through the gate and I won't let them have you.

Is Harv occasionally a good cop when he isn’t lazy?

He’s got his moments. He certainly cares. I’ve known plenty of Harv Bender’s, both in and out of police work. Men I don’t like, and don’t respect, but who I know would come running with guns blazing if you needed them.

He's not unique to law enforcement. There are plenty of people I've arrested and had problems with, but I have no doubt that if I got run over by a car or was getting beaten up in the street, they'd still come to help. A few might not. Some would. I hope.

“Rein,” she said, touching his wrist before he could get out. “What changed your mind?

Why are you letting him work on your case?”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about the people who died to make me what I am, he said.

“I still owe.” (Kindle Loc. 3331)

What does Rein mean by that?

Although each of the books are standalones, and you can enjoy them without needing to read the others, people who do read them all will have a more complete understanding of the story. I definitely want you to read them all.

In this particular case, I think Rein realizes that he has an ability to do things that most people don't. Those abilities were forged by great suffering and sacrifice by the ones he loved. He still owes them for what he can do, and the way he pays it is by doing it.

Carrie eventually solves the rape case by becoming a near victim, but her gun saves her. Is this a message to women?

Violence against women was very much on my mind during the writing of the book. It comes out of nowhere and they are specifically targeted just because they are women.

I’m not a gun advocate or gun fetishist by any means. Just a realist.

In the book, a predator attacks Carrie with overwhelming violence and she can either fight or die. She wasn’t going to karate kick her way out of that. A gun is a tool, designed for a specific purpose. Police carry them to accomplish a specific function. Carrie did what she had to do.

What’s next for Carrie and Rein?

Blood Angel releases in 2020. My editor always said most series only go three installments, so at least we went the distance. My goal with each of the Santero and Rein books was to improve each time. We’re starting to hit pretty high levels, so if we decide to do more I am going to have my work cut out for me.

Thank you so much for having me on Writers Who Kill!