Retired detective advises author of 'Gone Girl'

It happens on a regular basis.

Friends and acquaintances approach Emmet Helrich, the dapper former Burlington Police detective, and ask. Is it him?

Is he the guy that best-selling author Gillian Flynn thanks in the acknowledgments of her blockbuster mystery, "Gone Girl," — the book that has sold more than 6 million copies and opens as movie starring Ben Affleck in October?

Helrich's answer: Yup.

"Who else could it be, people," he asked, chuckling. "How many Lieutenant Emmet Helrichs do you think there are in Burlington, Vermont?"

It's a long way from the Burlington Police Department on North Avenue to the New York Times best-seller list.

Helrich made the journey on page 416 of "Gone Girl," where Flynn thanks the now-retired cop for advising her on police procedure for the book that begins with the disappearance of a conspicuously-perfect blonde on her fifth wedding anniversary.

Although he's never met the author and sees his role as fairly minor in the creation of the book, Helrich enjoyed the email and telephone conversations he had with Flynn about police work, especially now that "Gone Girl" is such a hit.

"It's a typical page turner and then I was amazed, that everywhere I go, I walk around the city or you go down to the beach, everybody on the beach has got it, you know they've all got it under their arm," Helrich said.

What did he do exactly? Helrich offered Flynn tips on how to interview a suspect (pretend you're a friend) and gather facts for an investigation (keep the suspect talking, because if he's lying, he'll mess up sooner or later.)

One of the hardest things a police officer must do is respond to a violent crime. "It's very sad," Helrich said. "You go in there and crime scenes are horrific. You go in there and it's a hard thing to just look at first of all, emotionally and psychologically."

It's important to think logically in the face of the emotion. "You've got to preserve evidence. You've got to save things. You have to call in all the right people. There's a thousand details that you have to take care of."

Getting it right

Helrich, who retired from the force in 2012 after 31 years and now works as coordinator of the Rapid Intervention Community Court in Burlington, started advising Flynn as she was writing her first book, "Sharp Objects" which was published in 2006.

It was around that time that Emily Stone, then a Burlington Free Press crime reporter, asked Helrich if he could offer detective tips to a writer friend in Chicago.

"She said that she had a friend in Chicago named Gillian who was writing a book ... She was interested in having a police contact who would be able to give her advice on police procedure," Helrich recalled. "So I said certainly."

Helrich also provided advice for Flynn's second book, "Dark Places" and by the time "Gone Girl" was taking shape he wasn't surprised when Flynn asked him for tips again. "I said of course," Helrich explained.

He's not a huge fan of crime books, but found "Gone Girl" riveting. He received no compensation for giving advice and is just happy Flynn's books found an audience. Helrich had no role in the film adaptation.

"My part is so limited but you know, she just wanted to make sure that all her details were appropriate," Helrich said.

Flynn succeeded, he said. "She handled the police details pretty accurately."

Plot turns, and more turns

"Gone Girl" leads the reader in one direction and then the other to solve the whodunit. The disappearance of the female protagonist sets the stage for a thriller about a murderous, pathological liar. The twist: It's unclear for much of the book whether that person is the lying, cheating, failed writer-turned bar owner husband (Nick,) or the icy, vain, obsessive trust-fund-baby-on- hard-times wife (Amy) .

The couple decamps from New York City and their hipster-literati lifestyle after Nick loses his job at a magazine. When Amy disappears they are living in Nick's Missouri hometown, in a suburban McMansion neighborhood that has become an eerie ghost town. Many of the bloated homes are empty, owned by the bank and burglarized nightly. The rust-belt economy is in a profound slump. Squatters, drug dealers and unemployed factory workers have taken over the gigantic abandoned mall nearby.

Nick has plowed the last of Amy's money into the purchase of the bar, where he drinks heavily when he's not sleeping with a young student from his community college teaching gig. The narrator's voice flips back and forth between Nick and Amy, making the book a gender study and relationship novel layered into the mystery.

Real life is often more basic.

From farrier to officer

Helrich grew up the eldest of eight children raised in California and on the East Coast. He mother was an aeronautical engineer and his father, a World War II vet, owned various businesses and finished his career in construction.

He has three children — two grown and in their 30s, and a 5-year-old with current wife Kristin Kelly, a TV news anchor and executive producer at Burlington's WCAX.

Police work came to Helrich by coincidence. He initially came to Vermont, settling in the small southern Vermont town of Arlington, to work as a farrier, a person who shoes horses.

The idea tanked. "When I got up here, there wasn't anybody in Arlington, Vermont wanting some city boy messing with their horses, essentially," Helrich said.

When he saw a Burlington Police Department help-wanted ad in the Bennington Banner it sounded good.

"I had a kid," Helrich said. "I needed a job."

He landed the position, went to police academy and worked dozens and dozens of cases, including a half dozen homicides, over the next 31 years. Among the crimes he helped investigate: The 1986 double murder of two clerks during a robbery at the Champlain Farms gas station and store on Main Street and South Winooski Avenue in downtown Burlington.

The man convicted of first degree murder in the case, a regular customer named Samuel Wright, left fingerprints and footprints at the scene and was soon doling out money to friends in small bills similar to what would be found in a cash register, according to court records.

It wasn't terribly difficult to gather evidence leading to a conviction.

The crimes in "Gone Girl" are highly elaborate, and brilliantly planned. Brilliance is not a word associated with many real-life crimes, Helrich said.

As a rule, most real crimes are impulse things, he believes. "There isn't too much plotting out. You may go out and try to size up a neighborhood or something that you're going to burglarize or see who's home or who's not, but, there's not a whole lot of effort put into things as in this book."

Many real-life criminals are sloppy and prone to blabbing. "You know, people leave evidence behind," Helrich said. "People brag about their crimes. People, I mean the whole world knows that there's a camera on every corner and every store and yet people still walk into places with their favorite T-shirt or sweat shirt and then they go home and tell everybody, that's me when they see themselves on TV."

Without revealing too much for people who haven't read "Gone Girl," it is safe to say that the book explores many themes, including people who get away with crimes and people who are unrepentant about the bad things they do.

Helrich's experience with real-life criminals has taught him that some criminals have no conscience and others do, along with hope to change.

"There are thugs out there who are nothing but thugs and will always be thugs," Helrich said. "But there are people who are not at all happy with the lives they are living and it's driven by either alcoholism or drug abuse."