Fact, fiction merge in Bay Area police officer's new novel
`The Ascent' centers on a Detroit cop who's grieving loss of wife
Adam Plantinga and Kurt Argento have a lot in common.
Both men have spent decades working as law enforcement officers on crime-laden urban streets in big cities. East-Bay based Plantinga is a sergeant with the San Francisco Police Department assigned to street patrol, and Argento has reached the end of his career as a street cop in Detroit.
Each knows firsthand of the lives destroyed and crime caused by drugs like methamphetamine and fentanyl that fuel addiction and fund the gangs at war in their communities. Each has learned about about failing prison systems worldwide.
Outside of work, both men love their dogs — intensely — and have experienced deeply committed marriages, leading them to carve their public and private lives into separate islands, out of abundant caution, but also due to personality and habit.
The two men have many similarities, but one key difference. One is a real-life officer, the other is a fictional creation.
Adam Plantinga is a member of the S.F. Police Department and the author of two non-fiction books on urban law enforcement as well as as “The Ascent,” (352 pages, Grand Central Publishing) his debut novel in which Argento is the central protagonist. The writer's first book, “400 Things Cops Know,” won the 2015 Silver Falchion award for best nonfiction crime reference. His second book, “Police Craft,” serves as a sequel to 400 Things, with short essays on police shootings, racial profiling, police-community relationships, and specialty units like SWAT, CSI, Homicide and others.
“The Ascent' is a crime thriller that springs off the page with such cinematic force it's impossible not to imagine a film somewhere down the line, not to mention follow-up novels featuring the dynamic, mercurial central character.
When we meet him, Argento has reached the end of his career — propelled to leave the department in part because he's reeling with grief after the swift, unexpected loss of his wife to cancer and because he no longer fits in with the hypocritical, bureaucratic jungle of contemporary law enforcement the book depicts. While traveling across the country to the West Coast, Argento intervenes when a pedophile harasses a young girl at a smalltown carnival in Missouri.
Things do not go smoothly, and Argento winds up in a for-profit maximum-security prison. But that's just the beginning. When a malfunction of the security system causes all hell to break lose, Argento is thrust into the role of protector and leads a small posse of prison staff and civilians to the roof by way of the six floors in which prisoners are segregated by type — mentally ill, sex offenders, gang members, violent lifers, and other categories.
Plantinga says the idea of a structural element in which six different criminal types are separated by floor — and the overall pressure-cooker environment — were early ideas founded in reality.
“As police officers, we run into different criminals who have their own habits and eccentricities. I didn't want them to be just petty criminals. I took liberty by separating them on floors: I had that
idea from the jump.”
Similarly, characters Argento and Julie — a governor's daughter who portrays a pivotal role in the story line — , sprang to life nearly fully formed.
“With Kurt, my agent and editor made suggestions to take a little edge off him, which seemed reasonable,” Plantinga says. “Writing Julie, well, I have a strong host of women from my wife to my mom to the women police officers I work with to draw from. They also suggested I add more twists and curveballs to the plot and the interactions between Kurt and Julie, who come from different directions but in the end, they bond.”
Appreciably, the bond is brother-sister or cop-partner rather than romantic. United against their common enemies Kurt and Julie form a formidable team in which neither is “the whole show,” according to Plantinga. “Although it's Kurt's story, like any two-person team, she sees things he doesn't.”
Because Plantinga was taking
his first plunge into fiction, but still wanted it anchored in authenticity, he took a tour of San Quentin prior to the pandemic.
“I've always been fascinated by prisons: that forbidding silence and boredom punctuated by violence,” he says. “It helped me understand not just prison layout, but prison culture. Talking to staff there, I learned there are inmates who legitimately feel sorry for crimes they committed and will try to do better. Some actually had victims who come visit them. There's a spectrum, but mine, even the best are still on the outs. It's not a place where anyone's getting better.”
Which prompts obvious questions about his “day job” as a sergeant and about Bay Area county jails and state prisons. During pandemic lockdowns, cities became almost like ghost towns, he recalls. The dip in crime rates “normalized” (meaning they shot back up), when the game-changing fentanyl hit the streets. The drug has prompted a nationwide crisis, and San Francisco has been one of the hardest-hit communities.
“It's $5 a hit and so dangerous our city is at about two overdose deaths a day. We have a pretty robust social services budget but we just don't have the detox beds or treatment to even make a dent,” Plantinga says. “There's no crystal ball or magic wand. Arresting street-level drug dealers doesn't affect overdoses.”
In other urban crime matters, training emphasizing de-escalating violence and identifying racial bias is starting to improve policing practices, Plantinga says. Team approach to gang violence or interacting with people with mental health conditions is no longer “run in and arrest your way out of a situation,” he adds. Instead, justice and effective law enforcement is better served by sitting back, coordinating with other agencies, using patience. Finding the balance between individual civil liberties and safety is crucial and takes thought and a slower pace.
As for Argento, Plantinga has already completed a second novel featuring the protagonist, which is now in the editing process. Meanwhile, Plantinga is negotiating a cinematic adaption with a TV and film agent and hopes to make an announcement soon.
“Who would play Kurt? Someone with gravel in his voice, not some Hollywood pretty boy, that's all I care about. Julie? A smart, athletic type who gives as good as she gets.”