Blood Mud[1] is a crime novel by the American writer K. C. Constantine set in 1990s[2] Rocksburg, a fictional, blue-collar, Rust Belt town in Western Pennsylvania, modeled on the author's hometown of McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, adjacent to Pittsburgh.

[3] Mario Balzic is the protagonist, an atypical detective for the genre, a Serbo-Italian American cop, unpretentious, a family man who asks questions and uses more sense than force.

[4] The novel opens with Balzic again being lured out of his retirement with an offer: track down the missing guns from a local gun shop for an insurance company.

[6] A review by January Magazine calls the Blood Mud "Constantine's best yet," praising the complex story and rich dialogue.

[7] Publishers Weekly comments on the "pitch-perfect dialogue", describing it as "beautifully developed and enigmatically resolved.