MOUNT SHASTA, Calif. — The world of crime isn’t for the faint of heart, but for Siskiyou County native, Gorge Collord, it can also be a source of artistic inspiration.
“There’s always this part of me that’s going wow, this is good stuff,” he said. “This is something that if we could just add some fictional characters in here and jazz it up a little bit, it could be very readable for people.”
The retired police officer turned novelist recently penned a crime-thriller novel called “Hear the Wind Blow.”
The story follows a former homicide detective investigating a cold case who is exposed to the dangers of organized crime and prison gangs.
“To rise up in any of those organizations you have to be ruthless, cunning, smart, tough, deadly, brutal,” he said.
Collord, who now volunteers as a teaching assistant at a Mount Shasta Elementary School, spent over 22 years in law enforcement specializing in the investigations of street and prison gangs.
He later became a Deputy U.S. Marshal assigned to the FBI interviewing dozens of current and former members of the notorious Hispanic prison gang called the “Nuestra Familia.”
“Men who survive in that prison atmosphere, they have an antenna that is so well defined and they know right off the bat if you are genuine or not,” Collord said.
That authenticity is something he wanted to be sure to capture in his characters.
“Everyone I wanted to put in this book were compilations of folks I knew that I met along the way,” he said. “Whether they had been bad guys, crooks I had dealt with, or sources I had recruited in Pelican Bay State Prison or in Folsom or in San Quentin.”
Although Collord’s since moved from high-speed chases to grading papers, he can re-live the excitement of his crime fighting days in the pages of his book and now you can too.
“You can’t get it out of your blood. There’s just something about it,” he said. “To experience it is just… I was so lucky.”
Collord says he’s already writing a sequel to his book which he expects to have finished by this summer.
You can find “Hear the Wind Blow” on Amazon.
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