"The Burning Glow" by Luke H. Davis

Cameron Ballack is back. And he’s traipsing all over where I used to bike. 

Ballack is the fictional wheelchair-bound detective created by St. Louis-based writer Luke H. Davis. In previous books (and there’s been a gap of some years), he and his team were based in St. Charles County, Missouri, part of metropolitan St. Louis. In his new outing, entitled The Burning Glow, Ballack is now the lead detective for the Special Investigating Department, which operates across the metro St. Louis region. (St. Louis actually does have something similar that operates across jurisdictional lines called the Major Case Squad.)

 

What Ballack and his team are pulled into is a car bombing in the part of the city of St. Louis known as “Little Bosnia,” home to numerous immigrants who fled the war in the 1990s. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Want to Find Yourself? Volunteer in Your Church Nursery – Cameron McAllister at Front Porch Republic.

 

Facts About Euthanasia in Canada – Tim Challies.

 

Growling in a corner: Samuel Johnson’s lost years – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

Defining Ideology – Bradley Birzer at The Imaginative Conservative.

“A Shattered Peace” by Luke H. Davis

Detective Cameron Ballack of the St. Charles County police department in Missouri is assigned Special Investigative Division that serves the metropolitan St. Louis area. The division investigates major crimes, especially murders connected to religious organizations.

He was appointed to this team because of his crime-solving work at a Greek Orthodox seminary (detailed in Litany of Secrets). His first major case with the special unit, recounted in The Broken Cross, involved the Roman Catholic Church. Ballack is something unusual among policemen – he’s wheelchair-bound because of congenital health issues. He’s also an agnostic, which makes for interesting conversation with his minister father and Christian mother and sister, not to mention his teammates in the division.

First it was the Orthodox, and then the Catholics. Now it’s the Protestants’ turn, in A Shattered Peace by Luke H. Davis.

Ballack and his team are called to Dayspring Community Church, a large Protestant evangelical church in a well-heeled suburb of west St. Louis County. A counselor, the assistant director at the counseling center associated with the church, has been found dead in her office. It doesn’t take the medical examiner long to learn she’s been murdered, with crushed ribs and fatal internal injuries from being punched in her back.

Suspects abound. The counselor was at odds with both the center director and the senior pastor at the church, who were maneuvering to remove her. Some of her fellow counselors can’t provide solid alibis for the time of the murder. And then the detectives have to consider her clients and former clients, some of whom might have their own reasons for disliking the counselor.

The detectives’ personal issues keep intruding into the case. Ballack’s girlfriend seems to be pushing away from him. His partner, Tori Vaughn, has a family crisis. Another team member will recognize someone whom she thinks murdered her father. Ballack’s sister has been dating one of the counselors at the center. The personal issues swirl around the team, and Ballack has to work hard to keep the team, and himself, on track.

And then there’s a second murder.

Luke H. Davis

Davis teaches at Westminster Christian Academy in St. Louis, and is chair of the Bible Department there. He’s also taught at schools in Louisiana, Florida, and Virginia. He describes himself as “Presbyterian body, Lutheran heart, Anglican blood, Orthodox spirit,” all of which have served him well in writing the Cameron Ballack mysteries. He has published two previous Ballack mysteries, Litany of Secrets (2013) and The Broken Cross (2015), and the first book of a new series, Joel: The Merivalkan Chronicles Book 1 (2017).

As in his earlier mysteries, A Shattered Peace is more than a simple mystery story or police procedural. The reader gains insights into how a large Protestant church (one with a dominating senior pastor) actually functions. And the characters regularly discuss theological and faith issues, and how faith applies to life. Ballack, as an agnostic, provides a counterpoint to the more faith-enthusiastic characters.

And it wouldn’t be a Ballack mystery without a rather thrilling conclusion – and A Shattered Peace clearly has that. In all of these mysteries, Davis maintains a high level of pace, narrative development, and reader interest. This third installment in the Detective Cameron Ballack series is the best yet.

Related:

Reading a Novel that Stars Your Hometown.

My review of Litany of Secrets.

My review of The Broken Cross.

Top photograph by Nik MacMillan via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“The Broken Cross” by Luke Davis

The Basilica Cathedral of St. Louis is one the city’s great landmarks located near several other landmarks. Situated on Lindell Boulevard in what we call the Central West End, it’s close to Forest Park, the St. Louis Art Museum, and the Barnes-Jewish Hospital complex and medical center. The cathedral’s distinctive green roof can be seen from miles away on Interstate 64, and its interior is famous for what is the largest installation of mosaic decoration anywhere in the world. Pope John Paul II said mass here when he visited St. Louis in 1999, and it was the church where baseball great Stan Musial’s funeral was conducted. (While not quite as momentous, my oldest son’s graduation ceremony was held here in 1998.)

It’s also an unlikely seen for a murder, this place that even we Protestants call “the New Cathedral” to distinguish it from the “Old Cathedral” adjacent to the St. Louis Arch. But that’s exactly what it is in The Broken Cross, the second Cameron Ballack mystery by Luke Davis.

An attorney, fresh from a major courtroom win defending the St. Louis Archdiocese, is found stabbed to death in one of the cathedral’s chapels. Ballack and his partner Tori Vaughan, police detectives assigned to the suburban St. Charles County Police Department, are currently assigned to the special investigation unit that investigates major crimes with significant religious connections.

In this case, Ballack is assigned as the lead detective, a not-exactly-welcomed move from the other officers involved in the investigation. They’re from the City of St. Louis’s Police Department, and they don’t initially take kindly to having to report from the rube from St. Charles. Not to mention the fact that Ballack is wheelchair-bound. But Ballack is in charge because of his success in solving a series of murders at an Orthodox seminary in St. Charles County, once that nearly cost him and his partner’s lives (Litany of Secrets, the first Cameron Ballack mystery).

This case involves the scandal of sexual abuse that engulfed the Catholic Church, a priest shuffled from ministry to ministry, a suicide from five years before, lawyers and real estate executives trying to shield the Archdiocese’s assets, and a more-than-sufficient number of suspects.

It is one enormously satisfying mystery story. Davis is a great storyteller who does something interesting with his lead character. What might have easily become too much sympathy for the man in the wheelchair is blunted by Ballack’s character – slightly acerbic, something of a chip on his shoulder, not exactly the guy you’d like to have a beer with. Despite his Christian parents, he’s trying to find God, not entirely convinced of his existence. And he even has a love interest. In short, he’s recognizably human. His first-rate mind and ability to process information and connect the dots will eventually identify the killer. But he does make mistakes.

Luke Davis

Davis teaches at Westminster Christian Academy in St. Louis (and yes, the story does contain a small plug for the school as Ballack’s alma mater which I can forgive, since it was also my youngest son’s high school). He’s also taught at schools in Louisiana, Florida, and Virginia. He describes himself as “Presbyterian body, Lutheran heart, Anglican blood, Orthodox spirit,” all of which have served him well in writing the Cameron Ballack mysteries.

I have to say I can’t help but enjoy reading a story with recognizable sights from the city where I live. In addition to the Cathedral, there’s the Drury Inn downtown, Cardinal stadium, Whitfield School, familiar office buildings and law offices in Clayton (the county seat of St. Louis County), references to my own suburb of Kirkwood, Fast Eddie’s Restaurant across the Mississippi in Alton – well, you get the picture.

The Broken Cross is a great story about horrifying events straight from the news that all of us are familiar with. It’s a fine mystery. And it ultimately is about what can happen when the church – any church – doesn’t deal with the sin that threatens to destroy it.

Related:

My review of Litany of Secrets

Reading a Novel That Stars Your Hometown

Luke Davis blogs at Sacred Chaos.

Photograph: Basilica Cathedral of St. Louis, scene of the first murder in The Broken Cross.