Cameron Ballack

Detective Cameron Ballack is not only back; he’s on a roll. Two mysteries so far this year!

The wheelchair-bound detective is the creation of writer Luke Davis. He’s works with the Greater St. Louis Special Investigative Division. The unit functions as a special task force focused on murder and occasionally general mayhem.

In The Burning Glow, published in June, he helped track down a car bomber. In his recent adventure, An Academy of Murder, Ballack finds himself on farm more familiar ground. A janitor has been found dead at King’s Prep, a private Christian school. It almost looks like suicide, but the forensic investigation shows it was murder.

The setting is personal because Cameron’s father, Martin, had taught there until he left for elsewhere. And much of the reason had to do with Cameron. The school’s administration had been unwilling to accommodate a special needs child.

The reader knows before Cameron and his team do that the janitor had come across evidence of a cheating scandal involving the chemistry class. Then the chemistry teacher is brutally attacked. Another murder follows. The school administration is something less than welcoming, and the tension with the investigators doesn’t help the investigation.

Cameron will do more than track down a killer. He will also uncover part of his own personal story, a part he never knew.

Davis teaches at Westminster Christian Academy in St. Louis and chairs 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 five Ballack mysteries, Litany of Secrets (2013), The Broken Cross (2015), A Shattered Peace (2017), and A Burning Glow (2026); and now An Academy of Murder; and Joel: The Merivalkan Chronicles Book 1 (2017). He blogs at For Grace and Kingdom.

An Academy of Murder is a terrific read. If you’re from St. Louis, there’s the added fun of seeing the places the police team visit, the roads and highways they travel, and the numerous references to the institutions of the city (including a few restaurants). It’s a fine mystery, full of twists and turns navigated by an exceptionally intelligent police mind.

My review of Island Games by Luke H. Davis.

Redemption: The Church in Ancient Times by Luke H. Davis.

Reign: The Church in the Middle Ages by Luke H. Davis.

Reform: The Church at the Birth of Protestantism by Luke H. Davis.

Renewal: The Church That Expands Outward by Luke H. Davis.

Reading a Novel that Stars Your Hometown.

My review of Litany of Secrets.

My review of The Broken Cross.

My review of A Shattered Peace.

My review of The Burning Glow.

My review of Tough Issues, True Hope by Luke Davis.

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

Ballack is the fictional wheelchair-bound police 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. The victim is a teenager, who had arrived at a spot behind an apartment complex to show his friends a body in a dumpster. The friends run off; the teenager dies when he returns to his car. The teen was Bosnian and Muslim.

The next day, another car bombing occurs – one in the parking lot of a synagogue in west St. Louis County. A Jewish couple is killed. The male victim happened to be the business partner of the man whose body was in the dumpster. Then a third car bombing is narrowly avoided, when the intended victim, another Bosnian in south St. Louis, happens to step outside his home for a cigarette after midnight and notices someone checking underneath a car.

And from there, the mayhem gets even wilder. Ballack is racing not only to find the killer or killers but also to solve the crimes before the FBI arrives. It culminates in a wild chase across south St. Louis. (By this time, I’m yelling at Davis to leave Ted Drewes ice cream store alone.)

Davis tells a nail-biting story. He also gets the geography exactly right. I know because I’ve biked those very same streets, and biked them a lot, including those in Little Bosnia. And I’m still trying to recover from the scene at the intersection of Chippewa and Hampton.

Davis teaches at Westminster Christian Academy in St. Louis and chairs 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 three Ballack mysteries, Litany of Secrets (2013), The Broken Cross (2015), and A Shattered Peace (2017), and Joel: The Merivalkan Chronicles Book 1 (2017). He blogs at For Grace and Kingdom.

So, Ballack is back, and his fans are thrilled. The Burning Glow takes the detective into new territory, deep into eastern European history and its transplant located in St. Louis. It’s a fast-paced, gripping tale, and here’s hoping we don’t have to wait long for the next one.