For some police
officers the dead body is the end of the case. The search for the living is
over and there is nothing left to do. For homicide detectives the body is the
start. The dead body is the door opening on a case waiting to be solved. For
Homicide Detective Ronald March, the results of a shootout in southwest Houston
are his ticket back to fully functioning in Homicide and ending his exile of
being farmed out on garbage details.
If he does not
screw it up.
Since that
fateful tragic day seven years ago, things have not been right personally or
professionally. What happens over the next few weeks and months in the summer
and fall of 2008 might be his last chance at everything.
A local loan
shark by the name of Octavio Morales is dead as are several of his criminal
associates. Detective March should not even be in the house surveying the
carnage as he has fallen out of favor with his bosses. But, a house full of
dead gang bangers brings out everyone and March couldn't stay away. It has been
far too long since he last worked a real murder case and he burns with the need
to work one. He surveys the scene and only March spots the evidence that
indicates that a hostage was there and now is gone.
Despite the fact
that he alone found the evidence, March is still locked into the bottom of the
pecking order and wasting his time with crummy assignments. Whether it is the
frequent sting operations enticing bad guys to show up and claim the cars they
won, the cop suicides he gets stuck with, or a number of others, the details
are garbage jobs. March has earned his bottom feeder status and he isn't going
anywhere. At least, until he spotted the evidence that no one else noticed and
changed the case from a routine killing to a missing hostage search. That earns
him a temporary reprieve and minor league status in the Morales case.
Assuming he
doesn't screw up.
But, he will. He
does. And yet, March also makes his own kind of twisted luck. It may be
tarnished luck but under all the slime there is luck and every now and then he
comes through in a strange way.
This debut
mystery by author J. Mark Bertrand features the usual stereotypical elements of
a burned out detective, a nearly destroyed marriage thanks to personal tragedy,
and a city that is little more than a cesspool with a population stirred up by
a hysterical media tracking a missing person's case. Usually these sorts of
books are set in Los Angeles. Instead, the former Texas resident set it in
Houston and also managed to weave in Hurricane Ike from a couple of years back
along the way.
Somehow, despite
beating the stereotype drum in nearly every area, J. Mark Bertrand makes it
work. Before long, one gets pulled in the noirish style world of Ronald March
where he frequently makes mistakes and yet survives against all the odds.
Psychology is a huge part of this novel and March quickly becomes not only your
friend but a guy you know that just seems to always have the deck stacked
against him. He can't play politics, goes his own way and does not fit in, and
yet manages to always get the job done.
The author's MFA
in creative writing from the University of Houston shows throughout the debut
novel as one gets the feeling every character trait and plot point is
orchestrated for effect in order to make a nice neat check mark on the master
list. At the same time, when he is actively working and on the chase,
occasional overwriting and stereotypical blemishes vanish as Mr. Bertrand
brings the scenes alive so well you can almost taste it. It is when the action
slows and March becomes contemplative about his life and what has happened that
the novel drifts a bit. That also means occasional errors in grammar, pacing,
the timeline of the novel, etc. are glaringly more present.
Just like in
real life, not everything in Back On Murder is tied up in a nice neat package.
While most plot lines are tied off well, one minor storyline involving a tenant
is cut off way too nice and neat. It comes to an abrupt dead stop and results
in a missed opportunity for further character development and secondary plot.
Considering how hard the storyline had been pushed up until the abrupt ending,
the reader is left to wonder why it just suddenly ended in that way.
Overall, the
novel is good, but not as great as it could be. This may be a case where
writers would be a bit harsher in their criticism of the book than the average
reader as we recognize the tricks being used to tell the tale. Still, the read
is full of mystery, political infighting, action, and no easy answers and
results in a 382 book that will keep you guessing most of the way through. J.
Mark Bertrand has a fairly decent foundation of a series to work from based on
this book. It will be interesting to see how it goes in the next novel in the
series, Pattern Of Wounds, scheduled to be published this July by Bethany
House.
Material supplied by the good folks of the Plano, Texas Public Library System.
Kevin R. Tipple
©2011, 2022
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