Mark Burton: Protector, Investigator, or Something More?

At first glance, Mark Burton is easy to define: a detective, a protector, a man doing his job. But that definition doesn’t hold for long, because Mark operates in spaces where answers aren’t clean. Where logic explains most things, but not everything.

As a detective, he follows evidence, trusts instinct, practices protocol. He's very good at his job, and that's no accident. A former Marine with a sharp intuitive streak, he's built to investigate homicide.

But increasingly, throughout the Angels series, he encounters things that don’t fit in his orderly world. What makes Mark compelling isn’t just what he does; it’s how he responds when certainty begins to fracture.

Mark is not a man who rushes to belief. He doesn’t abandon reason, but he also doesn’t ignore what he can’t explain. That tension—between skepticism and awareness—is where he becomes the perfect investigator for the crimes represented in these books. He isn’t just investigating. He’s moving into something larger, whether he intends to or not.

And that raises the real question: At what point do we have to be flexible enough to accept the solution that seems impossible?

For Mark, this realization takes time. It almost costs him everything. However, something inside him understands that staying inflexible means you'll eventually be broken.

In the next St. Augustine series, we'll see Mark through a slightly different lens. Still chief homicide investigator, he now has to step into the role of training others to do what he does. He'll also encounter new situations (bye bye, Navarre!) that stretch his belief system in different directions. He'll still be Mark--intuitive yet grounded, logical yet spiritual--but now he'll have to think differently about the spirit world.

Do we have enough flexibility in ourselves to consider solutions that aren't yet on the table? I think Mark would have something to say about that. And he should know: he's made a career out of outside-the-box thinking.

Because some roles aren’t chosen. They’re stepped into—one decision at a time.

📚 Angels Trilogy