What's a Bug Man to Do?

Tim Downs is a graduate of Indiana University, and a former cartoonist. He has won multiple awards for his books, including the Gold Medallion, the Angel Award, and the Christy Award. He is the founder of a communication training ministry of the Campus Crusade for Christ. Downs lives in Cary with his wife Joy and their three children.
Downs’ “Bug Man” novels feature the recurring character Nick Polchak, a professor at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. He’s an offbeat entomologist who often finds himself embroiled in crime investigations and disaster sites.

To do the research on forensic entomology, Downs signed up for a course that teaches coroners and CSI’s how to collect insect evidence at crime scenes. Every morning, the class watched slides of murder scenes, then went out to a farm where each student was assigned a “victim;” a dead pig. They had to collect maggots and label them. At the end of the course, they had a pig roast. Now those are people with strong stomachs!

The first book in the series is “Shoofly Pie.” The story is set in remote western North Carolina, where Nick helps a woman uncover the truth about the “suicide” of a long-time friend. References to Christianity are limited primarily to the elderly preacher who conducts funerals. He's treated sympathetically, and he never preaches. The message is that Christians are okay people.

“Chop Shop” is the second title. This time, Nick ends up in Pittsburg, helping a young pathologist find explanations for concealed evidence at the Coroner’s Office. A black market in transplant organs has resulted in targeted murders, and the commercial use of genetic information may be a screen for other dubious dealings. The themes of questionable medical ethics and basing human worth on one’s bank statement are thought-provoking instead of preachy.

The third book is called “First the Dead.” It is set in post-Katrina New Orleans. Nick is part of DMORT (Disaster Mortuary Response Team), which is the FEMA team assigned to recover human remains. Nick finds bodies of people who were clearly dead before the hurricane, but some officials want them classified as hurricane-related deaths. Readers looking for strong faith references won't find them here, although there are themes of good versus evil and redemption.

In his latest book, “Less Than Dead,” Nick is hired by the FBI to help solve the mystery of an ancient graveyard uncovered on the property of a U.S. Senator. While researching cadaver dogs, Downs and his wife took a tour of the Canine Enforcement Training Center in Virginia. The CETC is run by U.S. Customs & Border Protection, and it’s the facility where they train all of their drug-sniffing dogs, as well as dogs that can detect people and currency.

Downs says his faith is the reason he writes. “Jesus demonstrated the power of stories: Even people who have never read the Bible are familiar with some of the stories He told, and those stories were told two millennia ago. I think He was demonstrating a style of communication that was inherently powerful and interesting; storytelling.”

Downs is working on the next book in the series. This one will be entitled “Ends of the Earth,” and it’s scheduled for release in August. He won’t tell us a lot about the story yet, but we know that Nick is called to investigate a murder, and finds a host of strange insects that could potentially destroy the entire American agricultural industry. What’s a Bug Man to do?

-By Sana M.