Allen Eskens is a Minnesota gem.  His works are drawing attention all over and he is not only a best seller but has won many awards for his writing.  I am thrilled to have met him in New York at the Book Expo and he and his lovely wife attended Wine and Words in 2016.  He is an author I watch to see what he will put to paper next.  His first book, The Life We Bury was a delight to review with The Bookies.

~Sheila

Boady Sanden has happily enjoyed his retirement, that is until his friend Ben Pruitt shows up on his doorstep broken and grieving announcing that his wife, Jennavieve has just been murdered and he, Ben, is considered a suspect.  Boady, who still carries guilt over an innocent client from years ago feels this may be his chance to lift the burden a little and agrees to come out of retirement and represent Ben.

Detective Max Rupert is friends with Boady but does not share in Boady’s strong belief that Ben is innocent.  Max, carrying the weight on his own wife’s murder 4 years earlier, finds that Ben’s situation is stirring things in him that have never been resolved.

In a case that has friends on opposite ends of the court room, Boady and Max agree to disagree as both men work to unravel the mystery surrounding Jennavieve’s untimely death.  What will be the final verdict for all involved?

As I mentioned, you don’t have to sell me on an Allen Eskens book.  Lets just say, you had me at Esken’s.  I listened to this one on audio while painting my office recently and the story line, smooth narration by R. C. Bray (Narrator),‎ David Colacci (Narrator),‎ Amy McFadden (Narrator) was the perfect mix.  Nothing makes a project go by smoother than great audio.

I loved it.  The twists the turns had me all the way through… just when I thought I knew.. BAH.  I knew nothing.

Note:  You meet Boady and Max in The Life We Bury, although you do not need to have read The Life We Bury to dig into this read.  In fact for myself, I had forgotten that I had met these two men in a previous book with over a year for me between the reads.  I do however recommend you read this one before you read Esken’s next book, The Deep Dark Descending. 

In DDD, you really follow Max Rupert down a rabbit hole and I feel you need The Heavens May Fall to grasp where Max is at.  I have two friends (well I have a few more but this scenario is about two of them…) one read them as I suggested here and LOVED Deep Dark Descending. The one who read Deep Dark Descending without reading this one first found it to be dark, and did not fully grasp how Max Rupert came to be where he is in that book.