Funds
are missing from St. Basil’s Orthodox Seminary near Defiance, Missouri. The
seminary is undertaking an investigation but moving too slow for the diocese in
Kansas City. An administrative priest is sent to speed the investigation, and
is there only one night when he dies of an apparent heart attack.
Two
weeks later, the bishop asks the county police to investigate whether the heart
attack might have been something else. The two detectives assigned are Tori
Vaughan and Cameron Ballack. And Ballack may well one of the most unusual
detectives I’ve encountered in mystery fiction. He’s young, with a photographic
memory and a mind like a steel trap. He’s also disabled, confined to a wheel
chair because of an inherited gene that is usually fatal long before your 20s.
His younger brother died from it.
And
in addition to never quite accepting the death of his brother and his own
disability, Ballack is struggling with faith, as in, he doesn’t have any but he
knows there’s something more.
Ballack
and Vaughan set up shop at the seminary, and things begin to happen. What looks
placid on the surface is roiling underneath. And more violence is ahead.
Litany
of Secrets
is Luke Davis’s first
novel, and a totally engrossing one it is. It’s one of those books you carve
out time for and keep reading in spare moments, because you have to find out
what happens next.
Davis
has done his homework. The reader learns a lot about the Orthodox faith and its
various offices and services. The geography is almost exactly true to life –
Defiance, Missouri, in St. Charles County is just west of St. Louis County, and
Highway 95, the road to wine country, and the Katy Trail (bicycling!) run right
through Defiance. (The only difference is that there is no seminary in Defiance,
but there probably should be.)
And
he tells a fine story. Cameron Ballack is true to life, and Davis has fully
researched his disability, life in a wheelchair, and how technology has helped
people in Ballack’s position. But the research is kept restrained in the novel;
it doesn’t overwhelm the read. Davis has done it well and done it right. And Ballack’s
struggle with faith helps humanize the character, rounding him out so well that
it’s easy to forget you’re reading about a detective in a wheel chair.
Davis,
who lives in St. Charles County, teaches at Westminster Christian Academy in
St. Louis (my youngest son graduated from Westminster). He describes himself as
“Presbyterian body, Lutheran heart, Anglican blood, and Orthodox spirit.” (As
someone raised Lutheran, now Presbyterian, and who writes about an Anglican
priest, I think I understand Cameron Ballack’s struggle with faith.)
Litany
of Secrets is well told, well done, and a great story. And I’m hoping the next
Cameron Ballack mystery won’t be too long in coming.
Photograph by Larisa Koshkina via Public
Domain Pictures. Used with permission.
Many thanks for this, Glynn! Very honored, humbled, and blessed by your review!
ReplyDeleteSounds terrific. Thanks for reviewing this.
ReplyDelete