Backtrack
Arliss Cutter Book 8
Marc Cameron
Kensington Pub
July 2026
Backtrack by Marc Cameron has dual timelines. One is set in Texas during 1977, featuring D. Wayne Cutter, a Parker County sheriff’s investigator and Deputy Lawrence Johnson. The other is set in the present time, 2026, featuring Supervisory Deputy United States Marshal, the head of the Fugitive Task Force in Alaska, as well as his partner Deputy U.S. Marshal Lola Teariki. Both storylines will come together as the plot progresses.
In 1977, $5 million dollars was stolen from an armored truck leaving two guards dead, one outlaw tracked down, taken out by Cutter, and another, Ricky Lee Pink (Pinky) sentenced to life. Fast forward to today, where Pinky is now out of jail and determined to find out what happened to the diamonds.
“What I try to do, when I’m writing a book, especially a Cutter one, is incorporating what it was really like to be in law enforcement. It’s not episodic, like you see on TV, where there’s one case that you solve in 45 minutes. People who read the Cutter books know that there’s usually an A and C story.”
Boarding an Alaskan cruise ship, and joined by two other criminals and his girlfriend, Pinky aims for Anchorage. Arliss’s third ex-wife contacts him with suspicions that someone is following her on the same Alaskan cruise ship. After her cruise ship docks, Arliss Cutter discovers that she is indeed being followed. Arliss and Pinky become entangled in a dangerous showdown where Pinky is hellbent on getting revenge against the Cutter family and finding the diamonds.
“I guess I wanted to set a story on a cruise ship. My wife and I are not big cruisers, but we took one through the Panama Canal to research one of the Clancy books I was writing, and I thought, ‘man, this seems like a good setting for a mystery and thriller.’ I also wanted to introduce grumpy, Cutter’s grandfather as a real time character, not just in flashbacks. It seemed like a good marriage of the two plots. It just worked out.”
There is action, suspense, emotion, and family with shootouts, manhunting, and tracking.
