Title: Police Man USA: The SHOT that Split America
Author: R. Anderson
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 978-1665536844
Audiobook Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
Pages: 362
Genre: Murder & Suspense Thrillers, Sci-fi
Interviewed by: Jack Chambers

Read Interview

PBR:  Tell us a little bit about yourself.
The author of police man USA, R. Anderson was raised in a small college town in Illinois. He was the youngest of four children. His father was an English professor at the university and his mother was an avid artist. He spent most of his youth with the freedom to explore the town and play all sports. His family later moved to the big city, St. Louis, MO where he attended a boarding school. He continued playing sports and eventually accepted an athletic scholarship to Rice University. After completing college, he moved to the West coast and jumped from job to job       waiting tables, coaching high school sports, and running youth sports camps, before returning to school at Seattle Pacific University to obtain a teaching credential. After experiencing numerous jobs and adventures in the Pacific Northwest and Southern California, at thirty years old, he returned to the southeast to pursue a career in law enforcement by becoming a police officer. After several years of patrolling the city streets, he became a homicide detective.

PBR:  What was the inspiration behind your book, “Police Man USA: The SHOT that Split America”?
The novel police man USA evolved from the concept that as police work and science continued to advance over the next fifty years, how would a detective in the year 2084, with access to most sophisticated crime-solving equipment and video surveillance populating the skies, solve a fifty-year-old cold case without the use of the high-tech equipment? The author then created a world around that premise beginning with the gruesome murder of a high-profile athlete that goes unsolved until the unlikely Detective Merit takes the challenge to prove his worth.

PBR:  What theme or message do you hope readers will take away from your book?
The underlying theme of police man USA is the importance that individuals go outside of their comfort zone; challenge themselves, test their boundaries and feel the pain with the opportunity to experience real growth. The protagonist, Detective Merit leaves the safety of his ultra-conservative society Pilgrim and travels to a hyper-liberal land Frontier to tackle a seemingly unsolvable crime. In doing so he encounters a variety of people and situations, some good and some bad, and must make changes, adapt, make decisions and fight to overcome stereotypical barriers, limitations, and also physical obstacles to achieve his goal of solving the cold case hate crime before time runs out.

PBR:  What drew you into this particular genre?
Police man USA is a fictional story    yet a realistic, crime murder-thriller set in the future and allowed the author to explore how decisions made in today’s society; political, legal, and spiritual will affect how life will look and function differently in the future.

PBR:  If you could travel into the world of your story and speak to any of the characters you created, who would you choose to speak with and what would you want to ask them or know from them?
The protagonist, Detective Merit in police man USA, in 2084, having never worked a cold case faced the ultimate challenge to travel to the west coast to solve the coldest case in U.S. history, the race-hate murder of a sports icon that occurred on the worldwide stage. One stage in his journey requires him to travel to a desolate island off the coast of California. There, he encounters an old black man, a recluse, and Det. Merit needs his assistance to uncover an important clue. But with a lack of trust between them, to get what they both want, through an arduous process they develop a crucial bond that could crack the case. The author would like to meet the old man. He’s an interesting character that plays ignorant, but behind his façade has an intriguing past that he’s hiding and is pivotal not only in Detective Merit’s ability to solve the crime but in his personal growth and development.

PBR:  What is the biggest obstacle our world has to overcome in order to avoid a dystopian future such as the one you brought to life in your novel?
In the novel police man USA, a race-hate murder of a high-profile athlete sets in motion the division of the United States in 2034 into two giant states, the state of Pilgrim and Frontier. With Americans unwilling to bend in their political beliefs and tensions at an all-time high, before the U.S. crumbled, the citizens agreed to physically split the country in half. By the year 2084 Pilgrim has evolved into a police state with rules strictly followed and enforced, while Frontier State went to the polar philosophical extreme abandoning all laws to make it a better society. Both states, on the surface, appear to be functioning well and succeeding, but could Detective Merits’ attempt at solving the crime begin to expose a lie that divided the dystopian country fifty years earlier?

PBR:  What advice would you give to aspiring or just starting authors out there?
There is so much to learn about writing, and depending on the genre, the author believes a good place to start would be reading Joseph Campbells, “The Hero’s Journey.” In the book, he lays out the structure of what makes a good story that appears in many of the worlds’ writer’s famous works.

PBR:  What does the future hold in store for you? Any new books/projects on the horizon?
The author R. Anderson has recently completed his second novel       The SECRETING, a true crime novel based on an unsuspecting man’s bizarre plot to commit a violent takeover and the detective’s quest to uncover it before time runs out. He will be submitting the manuscript to literary agents in January 2023.