34 | JANUARY 14 • 2021 

P

assages appearing from cover to 
cover in a new crime novel, The 
Nightworkers, reflect author Brian 
Selfon’s reactions to his actual employment 
involving light undercover work — first for 
Brooklyn prosecutors and later 
for Seattle public defenders. 
Selfon, aiming for a career 
as a novelist since pre-college 
years in Southfield, supported 
his goal with workaday jobs 
that included deskwork as a 
chief investigative analyst. Not anticipating 
occasional assignments to monitor wiretaps 
or take on false identities for civil rights 
inquiries, he found his responses to those 
experiences triggered imaginings filling his 
first sold manuscript.
The storyline, which introduces a make-
shift family laundering money and connect-
ed to a murder victim lured into becoming 
a “nightworker,
” has brought enviable 
reviews within two months of the book’s 
release by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 
NPR described “a great novel.
” The Seattle 
Times commented about a “stunning debut” 
and a “favorite for 2020.
” The New York Post 
listed a “best new book to read.
” 
Already writing a follow-up novel, not 
a sequel but with overlapping characters, 
Selfon is beginning to get — and enjoy — 
unanticipated digital speaking engagements 
filled with intriguing reader questions. 
“The connection between the story and 
my work in part has to do with feelings I 
got from listening to wiretaps or prison 
calls,
” said Selfon, whose plot deviates from 
actual money laundering activities. “I got 
the sense that [those being investigated] are 
not just the thing they’re being investigated 
for. They’re whole persons with families and 
personalities.
“Even though I don’t condone what they 
were being investigated for, very often I 

had sympathy for them. Some were funny 
or just interesting people, and I think that 
[impression] made its way into the book. 
That’s kind of why none of the main charac-
ters is sort of a cookie-cutter bad guy. 
“They have interests outside of what 
they’re being investigated for. People were 
predominantly calling family, and that 
was some of the tragedy. People would be 
bringing their families into the business and 
possibly putting them in danger or incrimi-
nating them.
”

Giving the storyline credibility is the 
authentic sense of dialogue, which often 
exceeds narration. Selfon said conversa-
tional language came from simply “being 
awake in New York” and working in law 
enforcement. 
The author, 42, who went to Groves High 
School and had religious instruction at 
Congregation Shaarey Zedek supplemented 
by Camp Tamarack summers, attended the 
University of Michigan and graduated from 
Brown University in Providence, R.I., as 
a Russian language and literature major, a 
direction based on his admiration for works 

by Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.
“I got a job after college working for 
a book publishing company because I 
thought being close to the company might 
be a way to make a living while learning to 
write better,
” said Selfon, who found that it 
did not bring all he had hoped.
“I began looking for any sort of odd job 
that might help me pay my rent but also 
give me story ideas, and the one that I hap-
pened to get was working for the New York 
state attorney general’s office.
”
Selfon occasionally was required to be a 
courtroom witness, and that added to his 
thinking about investigations on behalf of 
defendants, another element in coming up 
with plot perspectives.
“In a lot of cases, [defendants’ attorneys] 
were asking me questions, and I was won-
dering why they weren’t asking me about 
[something else],
” Selfon explained. “It 
occurred to me that these defense attorneys 
didn’t have somebody [in a position like 
mine].
“That opened up the possibility that I 
might want to shift to working for a public 
defender. I realized that somebody who has 
been presumed innocent can be in jail for 
years before trial.
”
Employment on the defense side became 
available when Selfon and his wife decid-
ed to move to Seattle, where family lived, 
where she had job opportunities in com-
puter work and where housing was more 
affordable. With relatives and friends still in 
Michigan, the family visited the state regu-
larly before the pandemic. 
“My next book is going to be a mystery 
that’s about a family on an emotional jour-
ney beyond the whodunit,
” said Selfon, still 
intent on introducing complete characters 
that reveal traits outside the criminal or 
enforcement spheres. “I write whenever I 
can squeeze in time.
” 

Southfield native’s first novel gets rave reviews.

SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER

The 
Nightworkers

ARTS&LIFE
BOOKS

Brian Selfon

LAURA UTRATA

