Needle on the Haystack

Lt. Eric Matthews must help close down a drug ring big enough to make the Mafia gag, a gang that is not just selling heroin, but cutting the drug with poison and killing someone weekly. For the first time in his career he must serve undercover as an enlisted man—his advancement in rank requires such experience. He is assigned to the USS Hestek (nicknamed the “Old Haystack”) to track a suspected drug user back to his supplier and then arrest him, even though the two become good friends.

Lt. Eric Matthews must help close down a drug ring big enough to make the Mafia gag, a gang that is not just selling heroin, but cutting the drug with poison and killing someone weekly. For the first time in his career he must serve undercover as an enlisted man—his advancement in rank requires such experience. He is assigned to the USS Hestek (nicknamed the “Old Haystack”) to track a suspected drug user back to his supplier and then arrest him, even though the two become good friends. He has help from a team of other operatives, led by his team leader Captain Rena Skye, USMC, with whom he falls in love, but she is off-limits because she's his boss and because she's going through a divorce. Needle on the Haystack is not only a crime novel; it is a story about a naval officer in an unknown environment, who must overcome feelings of inadequacy and fight personal battles with his past. It is a tale of duty vs. compassion. Can Matthews and his fellow agents stop these criminals and save the Navy in Norfolk from this heroin scourge? Can Matthews find the needle on the Haystack?

Richard Bergeron grew up all over the U.S.A., but primarily in Rock Island, Illinois. In 1960, he joined the Navy at age 19 and stayed in for ten years. After boot camp at Great Lakes, he trained to become a Fire Control Technician (FT), and then had five and a half years of sea duty, mostly on destroyers. He served on the USS Laffey (DD-724), the USS Meredith (DD-890), the USS Norton Sound (AVM-1), the USS Cony (DD-508) and had a few months of temporary duty on the USS Sierra (AD-18). His final assignment was as an electronics weapons control repair and maintenance instructor in Newport, Rhode Island. Bergeron moved to Minnesota in late 1969, where he worked at Control Data Corporation (CDC), the Red School House (a Native American school) in Saint Paul, Minnesota Educational Computing Corporation (MECC, the "Oregon Trail" people) and with August Technology Corporation. Finally he served two years in AmeriCorps and a year as VISTA Leader with the Minneapolis Public School system. Bergeron used his G.I. Bill to obtain a Bachelor of Elected Studies degree, summa cum laude, with an American History major and an American Indian Studies minor, which led to an involvement with the Native American people in Minnesota. He became a traditional dancer and was adopted by a Dakota Family. He and his wife worked with the Minneapolis Juneteenth Committee for eleven years. (Juneteenth is an African American event celebrating the end of enslavement in the US.) Now retired, Bergeron is finally able to do two things he has always wanted to do: teach American Indian Studies, which he does as part of the Minneapolis Schools' Community Education Program, and write books. Bergeron wrote extensively at every civilian job. He wrote a number of articles in various corporate publications. Some of his college papers were published in general systems and futures studies peer-reviewed journals. Every program he designed at MECC required a teacher manual and many required audio scripts to go along with videos. He has a (not self-) published book of poetry called Where Did the Sunrise Go? and a number of poems published in Guild Press anthologies. His "Three Acadian Generations" concerning his French Acadian ancestors, was initially published by Yvon Cyr on his Acadian Genealogy website. This novel, Needle on the Haystack, is his first published fiction. He married his wife Barbara in 1968. They have three sons.