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Between Donuts
Twenty years of the humorous, sobering, and heart wrenching
Reality of a street cop
By Paul St. John Fleming
AmErica House, Baltimore, Md.
ISBN: 1591292557
Nonfiction
Reviewed By Carolyn Howard-Johnson Author of This is the Place
Between Donuts is a slim volume that will catch your attention because of the cover. Pictured are a chocolate donut with a bite from it, a jelly filled donut awaiting its fate and a deputy sheriff badge #507 with the name Paul St. John Fleming inscribed at the bottom.
"Ahh, copper stories," we might think. We all know the symbols, the jokes. Trouble is, we still wouldn’t have a clear idea of what the book contains. These "copper stories" are unexpected. They have heart. They might cause a reader to laugh and cry. They will certainly cause a reader to reassess his view of what a cop does—besides eat donuts.
There is a heart warming story about an English constable who influenced our author to become a cop later in life. One, called "A Cold Day in Hell, " is about the day author Paul St. John Fleming’s duty it was to guard a plane that had crashed in a city street with the corpses of two children in it that needed protection. Another is a humorous piece about a pie-eyed Santa who Fleming encountered one Christmas eve when he was given a choice to "work Christmas night or work Christmas night." Mostly vignettes and mostly reprints from columns Fleming wrote for the Salt Lake Tribune, there are 50 in all.
It’s my guess you won’t want to miss a single one.
(Carolyn Howard-Johnson’s award-winning first novel,
This Is The Place, is a saga or four generations of women,
from pioneer days to the 50s. Because it is of interest to
western history buffs, it was launched at Autry Museum of Western Heritage.
She is a former writer for the Salt Lake Tribune, the newspaper
for which the author of Between Donuts writes a law enforcement column.
Find out more at:
www.tlt.com/authors/carolynhowardjohnson.htm
or order it at
www.bn.com or www.amazon.com )