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How to pronounce Adam Plantinga: PLAN-tin-guh
Adam Plantinga's first book, 400 Things Cops Know, was nominated for an Agatha Award and won the 2015 Silver Falchion award for best nonfiction crime reference. It was hailed as "truly excellent" by author Lee Child and deemed "the new Bible for crime writers" by The Wall Street Journal. His second book, also nonfiction, is Police Craft. Plantinga began his career in law enforcement in 2001 as a Milwaukee police officer. He is currently a sergeant with the San Francisco Police Department assigned to street patrol. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, daughters, and Chow Chow named Ziggy. The Ascent is his debut novel.
Adam Plantinga's website
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Please tell us about your debut novel.
The Ascent is a thriller about a down-on-his-luck former Detroit cop, Kurt Argento, who is on a road trip out west when he runs afoul of a corrupt small town sheriff's department and put in a maximum security prison on fabricated charges. Julie Wakefield, a grad student who happens to be the governor's daughter, is about to take a tour of the prison. But when a malfunction in the security system releases a horde of inmates, a fierce struggle for survival ensues. Argento must help a small band of staff and civilians, including Julie and her two state trooper handlers, make their way from the bottom floor to the roof to safety. Standing in their way are six floors of the most dangerous convicts in Missouri.
I've read that only 4% of the people who start a novel, finish writing it. Why do you think you beat the odds?
Old mule stubbornness. Also, writing is my main hobby. I don't fish or play cards or collect stamps. So I write. My day job as a police patrol sergeant in San Francisco supplies me with a steady stream of material that I was motivated to work into a book. I was also set on writing the kind of novel that I like to read.
Was your debut novel the first book you wrote? (Any prior efforts ...
Shane Bauer is a senior reporter for Mother Jones. He is the recipient of the National Magazine Award for Best Reporting, Harvard's Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, Atlantic Media's Michael Kelly Award, the ... (more)
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