Book Review: J. Mark Bertrand Nothing to Hide

In this first book in a Roland March series we get off to a slow start. While there are some admirable approaches from J. Mark Bertrand there is also some pace issues that don't seem conducive to the fact this is supposed to be a suspense. Since he also publishing with a Christian company he has to squeeze in some sort of faith based subject matter in his book, and while it seems to be a good approach to get people thinking it isn't wrapped in obscurely enough to be creative.

When a victim is found decapitated it is up to March to investigate the roots of this crime. Interestingly Detective March finds that the body is a high profile undercover asset in watching over the movement of illegal arms from Mexican cartels. After beginning his investigation he finds the Feds are feeding him lies though, and that he must risk his own life to discover the truth behind the body that he seeking to find answers about.

  Unless you are a hardcore fan of suspense novels this will be a difficult read to get through. It gets slow in a lot of areas, and the characters seem to ramble to fill space. The good thing was that the novel was easy to keep up with for the most part, and at firs the mystery around the body was interesting, but as you grow deeper into the world of the government it just doesn't interest. Government novels are probably just something mostly for that audience. On top of that there were times that the character's relationships to each other just seemed confusing.

Unlike many that tackle some Christian subjects it does try to get a little deeper except it relies on another book to explain the questions being tackled without delving too much into itself. March is often told of carrying around The Foxhole Atheist, but there were never many moments his conversations on the subject captured me.

Also, many might disagree but I always get confused about why novels published by Christian companies can be okay with violence, but they aren't realistic about the words, and actions of people that would occur in these situations. It's okay to find a body left a mess in a murder, but it's not okay to discuss a married couple having sex. These things just have some sort of contradiction to them. Since this novel is easy to keep up with you never fully drift off and put the book down for good though.

Nothing to Hide tries to tackle some more complex subjects, and the writing is good. Something about the characters don't really catch though. Hilda and Bea seemed the more interesting of the characters featured, but they were a ploy for the man that was being searched for. March lacked something though, and hopefully in the rest of the series he will continue to grow as a character into something more complex. There were a lot of things that seemed absent about him though, and nothing romantic was even felt between him and Charlotte.

Rating 2 of 5.

This book was provided by Bethany House in exchange for a review.