Author: Allen Eskes
Year published: 2023
Category: Adult fiction (mystery)
Pages: 336 pages
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Location: (my 2024 Google Reading map): USA (MN, SD)
Summary: When Boady Sanden first receives the case of Elijah Matthews, he’s certain there’s not much he can do. Elijah, who believes himself to be a prophet, has been locked up in a psychiatric hospital for the past four years, convicted of brutally murdering the pastor of a megachurch. But as a law professor working for the Innocence Project, Boady agrees to look into Elijah’s file. When he does, he is alarmed to find threads that lead back to the death of his colleague and friend, Ben Pruitt, a man shot to death four years earlier in Boady’s own home.
Ben’s daughter, Emma, has lived with Boady and Boady’s wife Dee ever since that awful night. Now fourteen years old, Emma has been growing distant, and soon makes a fateful choice that takes her far from the safety of her godparents. Desperate to bring her home, and to free an innocent man, Boady must do all he can to investigate Elijah’s case while fighting to save the family he has deeply come to love.
Written with energy, propulsion, and his characteristic pathos and insight, Eskens delivers another pitch-perfect legal thriller that reveals a twisted murder and explores faith, love, family, and redemption along the way.
Review: I enjoyed the previous Allen Eskens novels that I read, Nothing More Dangerous and Foresaken Country (links are to my reviews). I have two to read on my TBR shelf and decided it was time to read one of them; boy am I glad I did. This book was just what I needed after a week of doing puzzles and not reading anything.
This book got me from page one. Eskens knows how to pull a reader in with good writing and an even better story. The characters are relatable and the story is compelling. There is a lot about Christianity in this book and as a non-religious person I was okay with it. Just wanted to give you a heads up on that.
Eskens has a way of weaving a couple stories into one, of getting the reader to turn the pages quickly to find out what the connections are, and of creating characters that are intriguing. What makes them tick? Why are they doing the things that they do? This novel especially, with it's 'insane' characters who seem to babble, made me curious to see how it all fit together and what the truth was that lay behind the murder and relationships.
If you're in the mood for a good mystery, pick this one up!
Challenges for which this counts:
- Literary Challenge: South Dakota
- Bookish Books--the Bible figures large in this novel
- Cloak and Dagger--murder mystery
- Decolonize your reading--religious tradition not my own
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