Back on Murder

By J Mark Bertrand

Description:

A missing girl. A corrupt investigation. They thought they could get away with it, but they forgot one thing: Roland March is BACK ON MURDER

Houston homicide detective Roland March was once one of the best. Now he's disillusioned, cynical, and on his way out. His superiors farm him out on a variety of punishment details...until an unexpected break gives March one last chance to save his career. And his humanity.

All he has to do? Find the missing teenage daughter of a Houston evangelist that every cop in town is already looking for. But March has an inside track, a multiple murder nobody else thinks is connected. Battling a new partner, an old nemesis, and the demons of his past, getting to the truth could cost March everything. Even his life.

Book Takeaway:

FROM AN INTERVIEW OF JMB: "I have an essentially theological vision. The world is corrupt down to the marrow. That’s true of people and institutions alike. Barry Unsworth, one of my favorite novelists, wrote somewhere: “Wickedness is too common in the world for us to think much of why and wherefore. It is more natural to ask about the rarer thing and wonder why people sometimes do good.” The cops you mention don’t get into trouble until their motives are pure. That’s a key to understanding March’s world. I don’t think I can explain it any better. Or maybe I should say, I’m writing these books to try and explain it.
"March says there are things you can prove in court but never know. He’s obsessed, like me, with the epistemological side of investigation, conflicted about whether his goal is to discover the truth or to build a case. Because the two aren’t necessarily the same thing, are they? The popularity of crime fiction, I suspect, is directly tied to our anxieties about knowledge and certainty."

Why the author wrote this book:

FROM AN INTERVIEW OF JMB: "It all started with this notion of “the suicide cop,” an out-of-favor detective assigned to investigate the suicides of his fellow officers. What kind of cop gets stuck with an assigment like that? Roland March was the answer. And he had to be a Houston cop. That’s not just a city, it’s a metaphor, and it seemed like nobody else was writing about it."