An Interview with Bruce Robert Coffin

Bruce Robert Coffin is an internationally bestselling novelist and short story writer. A retired detective sergeant, Bruce is the author of the Detective Byron Mysteries, co-author of the Turner and Mosley Files (with LynDee Walker), and author of the forthcoming Detective Justice Mysteries.

Winner of Killer Nashville’s Silver Falchion Awards for Best Procedural, and Best Investigator, and the Maine Literary Award for Best Crime Fiction, Bruce was also a finalist for the Agatha Award for Best Contemporary Novel. His Anthony Award-nominated short fiction has been published in a dozen anthologies, including Best American Mystery Stories, 2016.

Learn more at brucerobertcoffin.com.

Who/what made you want to write? Was there a particular person, or particular writers/works/art forms that influenced you?

As a child I was a voracious reader. Some of that may have been due to the nonexistence of cable television or internet. But reading provided both entertainment and escape from real life. At age eleven I read Stephen King’s novel Salem’s Lot. That experience changed everything for me. Instead of a faraway or make-believe place, King had written about my home state of Maine. Though the story is a clever update on the vampire trope, the fact that he set it in a place I knew well, and populated it with people I felt like I knew, gave it a level of realism I hadn’t before experienced in a book of fiction. King blurred the line between implausible and possible, simultaneously making the horror story more compelling and terrifying. I was unable to put the book down, despite the fear it instilled in me. That was the first book I had read that made me want to be a novelist. I wanted to write stories and books that made others feel the way I had felt reading King’s work.

What other professions have you worked in? What’s something about you that your readers wouldn’t know?

I worked as a police officer for twenty-eight years. Retiring at the rank of detective sergeant, I supervised all homicide and violent crime investigations for Maine’s largest city.

I am also an award-winning artist. Working in oil, acrylic, and watercolor, I painted everything from portraits to landscapes. In 2008 I was commissioned to paint a portrait of FBI Special Agent Edwin C. Shanahan, the first FBI agent killed in the line of duty, to commemorate the one-hundredth anniversary of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The original oil painting hangs in the Boston Field Office of the FBI.

Tell us the story of your book’s title. Was it easy to find, or did it take forever?

The Pirate’s Secret is the third novel in the Turner and Mosley Files, a thriller/mystery series that I am coauthoring with LynDee Walker. Like everything in this series, it was a collaboration. LynDee and I often joke about not remembering who did what after finishing each book. Two heads truly are better than one.

How did it feel when you first saw your book cover? Or when you first held your book in your hands?

Ecstatic. The Pirate’s Secret is my seventh published novel, and that feeling of holding the finished book in your hands is always magical. It never gets old.

If your book had a soundtrack, what are some songs that would be on it?

I’m thinking “Don’t Stop” by Fleetwood Mac and “I Won’t Back Down” by Tom Petty would both be pretty great. And maybe “Headlong” by Queen. If there is one word that defines Avery Turner and Carter Mosley, it would be resilience.

What is one thing you hope readers take away from reading your book? How do you envision your perfect reader?

I think LynDee and I hope that the reader will escape into the pages of the adventure. Lose themselves in the fictional world we’ve created where almost anything can happen. We want them to feel that same childlike exuberance we felt when reading our first thriller or action/adventure book. Or maybe the first time they saw Indiana Jones on the big screen. Our perfect reader is the one who says to themselves “Just one more chapter,” before reading for another hour.

What was the most rewarding/meaningful part of publishing your book?

I think with The Pirate’s Secret it was just the realization that I could do something different. Having previously penned a four-book procedural series it was quite a shock to think about writing something different. And not just switching genres but coauthoring to boot. Something I couldn’t have imagined doing even three years ago.

What new writing projects are you currently working on? Or, other projects that are not writing?

I have already written the manuscript for Crimson Thaw, the first novel in the forthcoming Detective Justice Mystery Series. This procedural series, largely set in and around northern Maine, follows the exploits of a second-generation Maine state police trooper named Brock Justice. Crimson Thaw, the first of at least four novels, is slated for a 2025 release.

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