Adam Plantinga

My older daughter regularly wins at family games of Clue. I find this disconcerting because I have 20 years of experience investigating violent felonies whereas she is 11.

In my 25 year police career, I've made, if memory serves, 4 arrests while off-duty:
1. A drunk driver who crashed and tried to wander away.
2. A paranoid man on drugs who jumped into a senior citizen's car and made him drive to escape unseen enemies. The citizen ended up pulling over in front of my police station where I happened to be standing after my shift because my car was in the shop and I was waiting for the bus. I grabbed the suspect who later tried to take the gun of one of the cops inside.
3. A man who made death threats to a woman on public transport. Turned out to be more of a mental health matter.
4. An auto burglar who broke into a car right in front of me.
I don't know if these 4 arrests are high or low or about average. I just know that while the prevailing police wisdom that you should just be a good witness while off-duty is sound because you don't have your radio or vest or backup, sometimes you choose to go off-script and take police action anyway. But I was younger then and my knees worked better.

Aw hell, I'd probably still do all the same things again today. I hate crime.

I'm writing my 4th Kurt Argento book on an old laptop. Typing an ‘o’ requires me to pound the keyboard like I’m driving a stake in the ground, and the 9 key works 30% of the time. No authr (I didn’t have the energy 2 spell it right) has ever suffered this much adversity. It is a prfile in curage.

One day I will write a Twitter post that will usher in a new dawn of enlightenment and unite the people in a spirit of peace and harmony but until then, here’s a picture of an old boot.

Author Robert Swartwood was kind enough to have me on his program the other day. We talked books and then some.

youtu.be/OVBSNhUUSs8