Book Review: “Front Row Seat” isn’t a detective story, it’s a cop story; Retired EHartford officer writes a real driving story | Living


Mindstir Media, North Hampton, NH

“Front Row Seat” keeps the promise of its subtitle: it is certainly not a detective story, nor a novel at all. But it’s a story about cops, or more specifically a series of anecdotes from a barely fictionalized police department that exposes Kelly’s vision of policing and exhibits a clear sympathy for the challenges he faces. think he and his colleagues are faced and an equally clear disdain. for police administrators and much of the public that the police serve.

Kelly, a resident of Hebron, is retired from the East Hartford Police Department after 21 years as a patroller, investigator, detective sergeant and patrol sergeant. He calls the city he writes about North Hayward, Connecticut, and explains in his preface that “the experiences… in the novel actually happened, but not in the way I’m describing them here.

The officers he worked with, he wrote in his preface, “are, on the whole, a group of men and women who, day in and day out, go to work, buckle up pistol belts, wear vests. -balls, handcuffs and doing the best job they can with citizens who don’t really want them, clueless administrators and a few coworkers who find more satisfaction in playing with their coworkers than going out and doing police work.

But while Kelly’s stories often turn into rants about everything he doesn’t like about modern policing, they also serve as a reminder to his readers that cops care about the people they meet. In one scene, two officers are tasked with monitoring a 7-year-old child who is at the police station because his mother has just been found dead in his room. The officers took care to protect him from the bad news, fed him, tried to entertain him with the television, and took his hands to walk through their parking lot to the nearby fire station to “pay a visit.” firefighters and play with their trucks ”. Their playfulness goes so far as to cause him to ring the bell outside the fire headquarters as loud as possible (as a practical joke to annoy firefighters, especially a deputy fire chief who is an old neighbor of a cops).

While an officer tells a trainee “one of the best skills you can have in this job is to relate to everyone regardless of their social status,” others laugh at the instructors recruited for. diversity training.

While the book lacks the plot and character development that characterizes most novels, it’s not that Kelly isn’t a proficient storyteller. One chapter details a dramatic car chase that ends with suspects fleeing on foot:

“Get ready for a run,” someone’s voice said over the radio. As if at the signal the (pursued car) turned right, sliding down the slope of the dike, dust and dirt rising from below as all four wheels braked sharply; the driver lost control and was unable to avoid crashing with a metallic blow into a large metal dumpster behind a warehouse. In the cloud of dust, four doors of the wreckage (car) opened, and four shadows fled in different directions. Street lights and security lights on the roofs of buildings, along with the cruiser headlights and flashing emergency lights, destroyed everyone’s night vision, making running shadows almost invisible and obstacles impossible to see. From the moment of the radio call about a fleeing vehicle to the capture of its occupants, Kelly continues the adrenaline-fueled drumbeat of chasing the officers.

Another chapter dramatically tells of a police raid. A truly compelling chapter is essentially a barely fictional account of the murder of East Hartford agent Brian Aselton while responding to a noise complaint.

Not all episodes in this cop story are as dramatic as these. Some are just sad. After recounting a sexual encounter between two drunk men behind a dumpster that ends in the death of one of the men, the book intern says:

“Part of me thinks it’s sad, you know, the way the two guys behind the dumpster live. Part of me thinks it’s pretty funny, especially the way you handled it. ”

The training officer sums it up this way: “Police work is fun, and weird things are what we see. … In terms of getting it right, well, you’re not going to do everything. If there are certain things you can do well for the times when you are involved, then you are doing pretty well. “

Kelly shows how even the most bizarre events can be done, with a little wisdom, to get them right. When one of the characters in the book and his intern respond to a report of two women arguing on their lawn, they find two lesbians in the middle of a breakup arguing over possession of a sex toy. But rather than using his authority to settle the dispute, the officer explains the property law and invites the two to come to their own resolution and assures the officers that their noisy dispute is settled.

Sometimes the dialogue is rude and the attitudes of the officers are offensive. Some readers nod and wink to say it’s like that; others will be confused and upset that it may be so. No matter what type of reader you are, “Front Row Seat” is engaging and satisfying read, and neither the winks nor the discomfort detract from the book’s value in giving civilians a glimpse of what it is. is the police and how officers feel about their jobs.

Lee Giguere is a former editor of the Journal Inquirer.


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