Bernard Schaffer is a longtime detective with Warrington police who has written and self published more than a dozen novels. According to Christian Menno from The Intell, the author recently signed a deal with a New York-based publishing house and his latest thriller titled “An Unsettled Grave” is available now. Support our news coverage by subscribing to our Kindle Nation Daily Digest. Joining is free right now!
Back in April, 76-year-old William Korzon was led into district court in Warwick. The sleeves of his gray sweatshirt partially concealed the handcuffs around his wrists. A detective wearing a dark suit, his badge dangling over his plaid necktie, positioned his hand on the man’s back, guiding him around a gathering of reporters and into the building.
Korzon was arraigned on first-degree murder charges in the death of his ex-wife Gloria Korzon, who vanished in 1981 and whose body was never found.
The task of digging into the disturbing, often bizarre details of the case during recent years fell to county detectives along with veteran Warrington Detective Bernard Schaffer, who also took upon the duty of escorting Korzon into court that day.
In police circles, Schaffer, 44, of Abington, is a respected lawman. And he’s gained a similar reputation in the literary world as a longtime independent author who recently landed his first deal with a major publishing house.
After another recent court proceeding involving Korzon, who remains behind bars and scheduled to face trial, Schaffer was asked privately if he plans to write about the case.
The answer, as always, was no.
“People always ask if I’m going to write true crime or about cases I’ve worked on. And my answer is absolutely not,” Schaffer said during an interview, noting that he could not comment on the Korzon case as it involves an active investigation. “I’m a novelist. I’m not a reporter. I respect reporters and I love journalism, but that’s not me.”
Schaffer is set to appear Saturday afternoon at the Doylestown Bookshop for the launch of “An Unsettled Grave,” a crime thriller released through New York City-based Kensington Publishing. The book is the second in what is for now planned as a three-part series following the psychological effects of police work as experienced by fictional detectives Jacob Rein and his younger counterpart Carrie Santero.
While working with the backing of a big time publisher is still new to Schaffer, he estimates he’s penned and self-published nearly 15 novels across a variety of genres including fantasy, sci-fi and western.
Balancing the dual careers, he admits, presents its share of challenges.
But most of those come from the outside, he says.
Schaffer recently took to Twitter — where he often posts his thoughts on boxing, TV shows and anecdotes about his two kids, with whom he shares a passion for comics and superheroes — to address some reactions he receives when people learn about his jobs.
“People have a fundamental misunderstanding about my writing + police work,” he wrote. “I don’t use writing to inform humanity what police work really is. I use police work to inform my writing about what humanity really is.”
Asked to expand, Schaffer said rather than use the medium as a soapbox to tell the public about policing, he chooses instead to use his experiences as a way to guide his characters.
He laughed as he described his 20-plus year career as a cop as “the longest research project for writing that’s ever happened.”
“It’s not just despair and doom and gloom. I also see a lot of bravery; a lot of resiliency. I see people able to overcome certain events in their lives that leaves me shocked at what they’re made of. And that’s inspiring as well,” he said.
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