Compelling plot will keep you reading Coffin’s new novel

I don’t know how a policeman becomes an awesome novelist, but Bruce Robert Coffin has quickly become one of my favorites. Bruce’s novels put you right into situations that are both dangerous and frustrating. I wonder – did any of these things happen to him during his 27 years of law enforcement in the Portland Police Department?

Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, Bruce worked for four years with the FBI, earning the Director’s Award (the highest honor a nonagent can receive) for his work in counterterrorism. OK, now I see where he got some of his intriguing plots!

I sure hope his Portland supervisor wasn’t the awful guy who was Detective Sergeant John Byron’s boss. Byron has been the principle character in all 3 of Bruce’s novels, and he’s both complicated and very determined. I don’t want to give away too much of the plot in his new novel, Beyond the Truth, published by Witness Impulse, an imprint of Harper Collins Publisher.

But central to the story is the death of a teenage thief, shot by a cop. And Byron is suspended for refusing to quit on that case. There’s lots more to this story, and you will not want to stop reading once you start. While I had a bunch of things to do, I set them all aside and took Beyond the Truth outside one afternoon where I sat in the shade and read the second half of the novel which I had started two days before. I needed to know how the complicated plot ended. And I can tell you this: I loved the finish!

Now I shall, somewhat impatiently, await Bruce’s next novel!

George Smith

About George Smith

George stepped down at the end of 2010 after 18 years as the executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine to write full time. He writes a weekly editorial page column in the Kennebec Journal and Waterville Morning Sentinel, a weekly travel column in those same newspapers (with his wife Linda), monthly columns in The Maine Sportsman magazine, two outdoor news blogs (one on his website, georgesmithmaine.com, and one on the website of the Bangor Daily News), and special columns for many publications and newsletters. Islandport Press published a book of George's favorite columns, "A Life Lived Outdoors" in 2014. In 2014, George also won a Maine Press Association award for writing the state's bet sports blog. In 2016, Down East Books published George's book, Maine Sporting Camps, and Islandport Press published George and his wife Linda's travel book, Take It From ME, about their favorite Maine inns and restaurants.