MAY 20 • 2021 | 95
R
etired attorney Mark Bello of West
Bloomfield spent his career try-
ing cases for social justice. Now
in retirement, he has culled knowledge
from those cases and from other social
justice issues plucked from the headlines
to pen and self-publish Betrayal, a series of
legal thriller novels. His sixth book in the
series, Supreme Betrayal is loosely based
on the hearing and appointment of Brent
Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court.
As a trial attorney, Bello said he witnessed
convictions of innocent men who lacked
the resources for a strong defense litigator.
“Practicing law became more of a passion
than a vocation for me and compelled me
to challenge the system and provide a voice
to the disenfranchised,
” he said.
One case that has haunted Bello through
the years is a sexual abuse and cover-up
case involving a Detroit Catholic church
that Bello litigated and won in the 1970s.
Bello tried the case in civil court, which he
won for his clients. The priests were also
convicted in criminal court and served time
in prison.
When the case concluded, Bello resolved
to someday write a book about it. Decades
later, he self-published Betrayal of Faith
(2016), which in turn propelled him to
write five more in the Betrayal legal thriller
series — Justice (2017), Blue (2018), Black
(2019), Betrayal High (2020) and, released
this April, Supreme Betrayal.
Zachary Blake, the main protagonist in
his books, is based on his own experiences
growing up Jewish and practicing law in
and around Detroit. Bello said he created
Blake as a young man who was inspired to
become a lawyer and pursue justice after
listening to his grandfather’s survival stories
from Auschwitz, chronicled in Bello’s
novella, L
’Dor va Dor (2020).
Bello’s readers from Metro Detroit will
see many references to their hometown and
surrounding suburbs, as well as references
to Jewish life in Detroit, in all his books.
A lifelong Detroiter, Bello grew up in a
modern Orthodox household in Northwest
Detroit and as a child attended Beth
Abraham Synagogue, where his grandfather
was a founding member. His earliest mem-
ories include congregants who did not live
in walking distance to synagogue staying at
their house on the High Holidays and an
uncle breezing through the entire Haggadah
in Hebrew at Passover seders.
After practicing law cases, he then owned
and managed a lawsuit funding company
for 22 years when he began to toy with the
notion of writing novels about the cases
he witnessed where common citizens were
wrongfully treated by corporations, the
insurance industry, government or police
enforcement, he said.
Now, at age 69, he has seen the explosion
of the legal thriller genre and is hoping his
Betrayal series will find an audience start-
ing where the books are set, right here in
Detroit or in Michigan. His novels highlight
social issues of the day, from Black people
being murdered by white police officers at
routine traffic stops, a murder mystery set
in a small northern Michigan town involv-
ing white supremacy, school shootings, and
the rise of the candidacy and election of a
billionaire for president.
It was his second book, Betrayal of Justice
— based loosely on the candidacy and
election of Donald Trump — that inspired
him to keep writing four successive novels
that are fictional accounts plucked from the
news of the day.
“It took me 30 years between coming
up with a novel idea, putting it down and
working to publish it finally in 2016,
” Bello
said. “I really thought I would only write
one book. It was not the first novel that
inspired me to write the second, but it was
completing the second that inspired me to
write the next five.
“I discovered that with character develop-
ment and research, I was able to write about
issues I did not have direct experiences with
as a lawyer. There are plenty of topics in the
news that inspire me as a writer, and I hope
it, in turn, will inspire my readers to think
more deeply about social justice issues.
”
ARTS&LIFE
BOOKS
Local author tackles social justice
issues in his novels.
Legal Thrillers
STACY GITTLEMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Mark Bello