Mars Bahr Mysteries Series

Set against the black backdrop of a ruthless Minnesota winter, KJ Erickson's debut novel is bursting with masterfully plotted suspense and intricately rendered characters. Prickly but gifted Minneapolis Special Detective Marshall "Mars" Bahr is a man whose devotion to his eight-year-old son is eclipsed only by his love of the hunt. Mars hasn't won any popularity contests among his fellow officers, but his commitment to his job and his investigative talents have gotten him a plumb assignment: Special Detective in charge of the First Response Unit, reporting directly to the chief. On a winter morning, when Mars is called to the scene of a homicide near the outskirts of town, his first thought is that a homeless drunk passed out in the wrong place on a freezing cold night. What he finds turns out to be much more menacing, a nightmare case involving a teenage girl from the right side of the tracks. With few clues and increasing pressure from the mayor on down to apprehend the killer, Mars is forced to turn away from the details of the crime on the bluffs and instead focus on the victim herself. Mary Pat Fitzgerald seemed to have a storybook lifestyle, at least from the outside. With a little digging, however, it becomes clear that appearances can be deceiving. Mars and his partner, Nettie Frisch, turn up some provocative clues in the search to uncover the truth about the young woman's lonely death-- but can they trust them? Third Person Singular is a multilayered screamer of a debut that will have readers breathlessly awaiting KJ Erickson's next effort.

Frank Beck, a man with terminal colon cancer, a new divorce, and a stack of debts, hangs himself. It's an open-and-shut suicide--except for a string of numbers inscribed on Beck's right arm. Minneapolis Homicide Detective Marshall Bahr can't make sense of the numbers or the fact that a guy everyone describes as sloppy tied a perfect hangman's noose for himself. But then he uncovers an obscure fact in the dead man's ancestry--a connection to the Battle of Gettysburg--and to make sense of its bearing on this homicide, he needs to understand ninety seconds of action at the end of this historical battle. Mars and his partner Nettie Frisch begin to theorize based on the idea that this death-by-hanging just might be related to the Civil War. Then, another body turns up and before Mars can even believe it's true, they're are on the trail of a serial killer whose motive seems to be related to a contemporary controversy about Gettysburg and the descendents of the First Minnesota Volunteers, the legendary northern regiment who turned the tide against the Confederacy on that fateful day. In this enormously compelling follow-up to Third Person Singular, KJ Erickson delivers a top-notch police procedural full of twists and turns, pitting a relentless cop against an equally determined killer.

Heiress Terri Jackman was brutally murdered, and everyone-including Minneapolis Homicide detective "Mars" Bahr-believes that her abusive husband, basketball star Tayron "T-Jack" Jackman, did it. But he has an unshakeable alibi... T-Jack was with Terri's parents and lawyer signing divorce papers when the killing took place. Now, to add insult to injury, he's pocketing a $100 million settlement-the price Terri's desperate parents paid to get her out of the marriage. Mars feels a burning need for justice in this case. But he's transferring out of Homicide in just ten day and facing a family crisis that could cost him his son. Is there time to find the flaw in T-Jack's perfect crime? Soon Mars has hit the wall, which is broad and blue and looks like the new Chief of Police. Politics block his every shot...and so is a killer who has left no loose ends, just a path strewn with dead bodies. Because no one can squeal when they're as silent as the grave...

Tired of the politics, publicity and endless nights that go with major homicides, Detective Mars Bahr and his partner Nettie Frisch have moved to the Cold Case Unit, which covers the Minneapolis Police Department's oldest unsolved cases. One of their first assignments is tackling the murders of rural convenience store employees, which leads them to a sixteen-year-old missing persons case. In 1986, seventeen-year-old Andrea Bergstad was working alone at night at a rural Minnesota gas station when she vanished without a trace. On the store's fuzzy security videotape, one minute she's there, talking on the phone to her best friend, and the next she's gone. Now, sixteen years later, Mars goes back to Redstone, Minnesota, to try to put together the pieces of this baffling case. In Redstone, Mars meets retired sheriff Sig Sampson, off the job for several years but haunted by the Bergstad case like it was yesterday. Sig Sampson is the only person who can help Mars do what needs to be done in order to solve it: His memory is the only thing that can take this cold case and make it hot. Mars and Sig dive into the investigation, and Mars soon begins to think that their hard work will get them somewhere. But his concern over the details distracts him from the greater issues in the case, and before he knows it, the lives of the two most important people in Mars' life are at risk. As with her most recent acclaimed novel, The Last Witness, KJ Erickson delivers a fast-paced, engaging, and surprising thriller.