City councilman, former reporter releases second murder mystery

Local author Mark Bliss — a former Southeast Missourian reporter who is now on the Cape Girardeau City Council — is taking readers on another trip to Elmwood, Missouri, to unravel another murder mystery.

Mark Bliss

Mark Bliss

"Grounded in Murder", the second installment of Bliss' Elmwood mystery series, was published earlier this year.

The fictional town of Elmwood, where murder mysteries seem to happen quite often, is loosely based on Cape Girardeau, Bliss said, from the floodwalls in the first book, "Foul Rising", to the Confederate monument in his newest book.

Those who have read "Foul Rising" will be welcomed back by familiar characters such as reporters Connor Tate and Rachel Short, but they will also meet new characters such as Jake Wilder, the main suspect of the latest murder.

The story follows the killing of a banker who has been painted black and buried in a shallow grave in front of a Confederate monument. The murder shocks the town and sparks a Black Lives Matter movement. Reporters Tate and Short take to finding out who the murderer is as well as figuring out a second murder that is tied to the statue.

"While it's fiction, you still have some kernels of, I guess, truth ... factored in there," Bliss said. "But naturally, having been a reporter, I had to make reporters my central figures."

Being able to grow with his characters is something Bliss said he has enjoyed during the writing of the second book.

"So there's some continuity. You know, I think that's good to have if you're trying to do a series type of thing, but it also allows your characters to grow a little bit, and I enjoy that aspect of it, too," Bliss said. "This isn't like a shoot-'em-up type of book. ... The development of the characters and the interaction of the characters is what I really enjoy."

Bliss said his reporter background has helped him write the books and to put in information he knows about.

"I don't think I could have written these books had I not worked as a reporter here in Cape Girardeau," Bliss said. "So that's kind of my whole thing, you know, my first book dealt with flooding; I covered flooding. The second one involves the Confederate statue; and I was actually involved in that whole thing, because I was serving on the city's Historic Preservation Commission, so I had experience with that."

"Grounded in Murder" is available at amazon.com, as well at Visit Cape in downtown Cape Girardeau. Bliss said he plans to sell them later in the year at the Glenn House as well as have book signings.