Christian fiction continues to provide many options for readers with various preferences in style. No longer limited to “Christian Romance”, writers of Christian fiction are writing the same kind of material as other writers, from action, to mystery, to suspense and drama, and historical fiction, to name a few. J. Mark Bertrand works with mystery, drama and suspense in Pattern of Wounds: A Roland March Mystery, a good who-dun-it police detective story, but with a distinctly Christian worldview.
About Pattern of Wounds
Pattern of Wounds – A Roland March Mystery by J. Mark Bertrand
A brutal murder.
An unraveling conviction.
To catch the killer, Roland March must decipher the
PATTERN OF WOUNDS
It’s Christmas in Houston, and homicide detective Roland March is on the hunt for a killer. A young woman’s brutal stabbing in an affluent neighborhood bears all the hallmarks of a serial murder. The only problem is that March sent the murderer to prison ten years ago. Is it a copycat–or did March convict the wrong man?
Alienated from his colleagues and with a growing rift in his marriage, March receives a series of taunting messages from the killer. The bodies pile up, the pressure builds, and the violence reaches too close to home. Up against an unfathomable evil, March struggles against the clock to understand the hidden message in the pattern of wounds.
My Review
In the evenings while I’m working, after the kiddos go to bed, Sweetie has been putting on something from NetFlix to watch, and recently it’s been a reality cop show, homicide detective style. When I started reading Pattern of Wounds it was one night after watching that show. I slid right from the homicide investigations on-screen to the homicide investigation in the book. The dialogue in the book could have come right off the show. I think that made this book very believable and plausible to me as I began to read it.
I’m usually the kind of person who likes to read stories in order, to read a series of books from start to finish, in the order they were written to be read. I believe Pattern of Wounds is a sequel to Back on Murder, but I haven’t read the first book, and that made me wonder about how jumping into the middle of the story would work. Pattern of Wounds, however, stands firmly on its own. The central character, Roland March, is well fleshed-out here: a homicide detective in Houston, known for kind of doing this his own way, on the fringe of faith, involuntarily pushing those close to him further away. All of this is clearly told in this sequel, and I was never left with a nagging wonder of what happened before. Enough of the back story is told throughout this book to give satisfactory picture of life before this particular homicide investigation.
The book is written in 3 parts, and such delineation would have occurred subtly in the reader’s mind, except for it being overtly pointed out with section title pages. The story clearly progresses through 3 phases – Bystander: investigation as per regular procedures; A Mirror Blinding: a previous conviction possibly unraveling causes some backtracking and painful ‘in your face’ experiences where March sees himself and the situations in a new light; Let Justice Roll Down: getting the killer (maybe?) and yet that still not being enough to satisfy something inside of March, who again pushes further away from mainstream ways of doing things.
March is a peculiar character – he seems to fit well with the rest of us weirdies here at It’s OK to be WEIRD! He’s got a big heart, but somehow his rationalization of things gets him going in a direction he knows he probably shouldn’t be going. If anything, March seems to be good at what he does, even when using unorthodox methods, and yet conflicted at times for various reasons. The story is told from his point of view, in the present tense, so we’re walking around in his brain while he’s going through the motions of a heinous homicide investigation. This perspective endeared him to me, and I can say I like him (as far as liking a character in a book goes), and I feel for his situation. But this perspective also makes the conflict within him very apparent, and at the end of Pattern of Wounds, with the ‘bad guy’ taken care of, I was still left feeling very sad for March.
There are people close to March, nearly every one of them in fact, who are living and serving as Christians, and praying for him, and attempting to witness to him. But one of the key suspects in his investigation is also a Christian, and so March is left wrestling with the questions of the reality of Christ changing lives, or His apparent lack of being able to truly change lives. March has all the answers when it comes to faith, so most of the time he’s isn’t asking any questions, and he’s happy to let his Christian friends and family do their thing, so long as it doesn’t interfere with his thing. By the end of the book, that mode of operation is clearly not working, as March’s lack of engagement drives a wedge deeper and deeper between himself and those he cares about most.
Pattern of Wounds is likely not the end of the line for Roland March – the way this book ends leaves a perfect opening for the next installment of the Roland March Mysteries.
Christians and non-Christians alike would be comfortable reading Pattern of Wounds. Nothing about this book is preachy or churchy. The issues of faith are just part of the storyline, and with March giving less than lip-service to the Christian principles in the book, non-believers will find it easy to relate to him. And, most believers have themselves struggled with many of the facets of faith that bother March, so they will also identify with March, as well as with his wife and friends who want so desperately to see him come to Christ. In addition, there is enough detail to satisfy the crime-processing minds, while not having so much detail as to be anywhere near gory (in my opinion).
After reading books like Melanie Well’s Dylan Foster series, and most of Ted Dekker’s books, I would say I also like J. Mark Bertrand and his style of writing, and will be looking for more of his books. If you like mysteries, or well-told cop stories, you’ll enjoy Pattern of Wounds.
Book has been provided courtesy of Baker Publishing Group and Graf-Martin Communications, Inc. Available at your favourite bookseller from Bethany House, a division of Baker Publishing Group.
