Showing results by author "Allen Eskens" in All Categories

College student Joe Talbert has the modest goal of completing a writing assignment for an English class. His task is to interview a stranger and write a brief biography of the person. With deadlines looming, Joe heads to a nearby nursing home to find a willing subject. There he meets Carl Iverson, and soon nothing in Joe's life is ever the same. Carl is a dying Vietnam veteran-and a convicted murderer. With only a few months to live, he has been medically paroled to a nursing home after spending thirty years in prison for the crimes of rape and murder.

In a small Southern town where loyalty to family and to "your people" carries the weight of a sacred oath, defying those unspoken rules can be a deadly proposition. After 15 years of growing up in the Ozark hills with his widowed mother, high-school freshman Boady Sanden is beyond ready to move on. He dreams of glass towers and cityscapes, driven by his desire to be anywhere other than Jessup, Missouri. The new kid at St. Ignatius High School, if he isn't being pushed around, he is being completely ignored.

Max Rupert has left his position as a Minneapolis homicide detective to live in solitude. Mourning the tragic death of his wife, he's also racked by guilt—he alone knows what happened to her killer. But then the former local sheriff, Lyle Voight, arrives with a desperate plea: Lyle’s daughter Sandy and his six-year-old grandson Pip have disappeared. Lyle’s certain Sandy's ex-husband Reed is behind it, but the new sheriff is refusing to investigate. When Max reluctantly looks into their disappearance, he too becomes convinced something has gone very wrong.

At 15, Boady Sanden dreams of being anywhere other than Jessup, Missouri. Then the Elgins move in across the road. Getting to know his new neighbours - a black family in a community where notions of 'us' and 'them' still carry weight - Boady is forced to rethink the world he took for granted. Secrets hidden in plain sight begin to unfold. There's the mother consumed by loss of her husband, the neighbour who carries the wounds of a mysterious past, the quiet boss fighting a hidden battle.

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.

A former Medal of Valor winner, Minnesota detective Alexander Rupert is now under subpoena by a grand jury on suspicion of corruption. So when he's asked to look into the false identity of a car-accident victim named James Putnam, a man who in fact died 15 years earlier, Rupert sees a potentially big case and an opportunity to regain his respectability. But the investigation puts him in the path of "the Beast", the nom de guerre of Drago Basta, a cunning veteran of the Balkan wars.

Detective Max Rupert's and attorney Boady Sanden's friendship is being pushed to the breaking point. Max is convinced that Jennavieve Pruitt was killed by her husband, Ben. Boady is equally convinced that Ben, his client, is innocent. As the case unfolds, the two are forced to confront their own personal demons.

Homicide Detective Max Rupert never fully accepted his wife's death, even when he believed that a reckless hit and run driver was the cause. But when he learns that in fact she was murdered, he devotes himself to hunting down her killers. Most of his life he had thought of himself as a decent man. But now he's so consumed with thoughts of retribution that he questions whether he will take that last step and enact the vengeance he longs for.

Lila Nash is on the verge of landing her dream job - working as a prosecutor under the Hennepin County Attorney - and has settled into a happy life with her boyfriend, Joe Talbert. But when a woman is pulled from the Mississippi River, barely alive, things in the office take a personal turn. The police believe the woman’s assailant is local photographer Gavin Spenser, but the case quickly flounders as the evidence wears thin. It seems Gavin saw this investigation coming - and no one can imagine how carefully he has prepared.

Joe Talbert, Jr. has never once met his namesake. Now out of college, a cub reporter for the Associated Press in Minneapolis, he stumbles across a story describing the murder of a man named Joseph Talbert in a small town in southern Minnesota. Full of curiosity about whether this man might be his father, Joe is shocked to find that none of the town's residents have much to say about the dead man - other than that his death was long overdue.

Hana Babic is a quiet middle-aged librarian in Minnesota who wants nothing more than to be left alone. But when a detective arrives with the news that her best friend has been murdered, Hana knows that something evil has come for her, a dark remnant of the past she and her friend had shared. Thirty years before, Hana was someone else: Nura Divjak, a teenager growing up in the mountains of war-torn Bosnia—until Serbian soldiers arrived to slaughter her entire family before her eyes. The events of that day thrust Nura into the war, leading her to join a band of militia fighters.

A única coisa que Joe Talbert deseja é terminar o trabalho da faculdade: entrevistar um estranho e escrever uma breve biografia. Com os prazos se aproximando, o garoto decide ir a um asilo para encontrar o tão desejado objeto de trabalho. Lá ele conhece Carl Iverson e logo a vida de Joe vai ter mudado para sempre.

Der Student Joe Talbert muss fürs College mit einem völlig Fremden ein Interview führen. Dafür sucht er in einem Pflegeheim nach der passenden Person und trifft auf den krebskranken, im Sterben liegenden Carl Iverson. Doch Iverson ist kein harmloser alter Mann. Er ist ein verurteilter Mörder. Vor 30 Jahren soll er ein Mädchen missbraucht, umgebracht und in seinem Schuppen verbrannt haben. Nach einigen Gesprächen erkennt Joe, dass etwas an dem grausamen Mordfall nicht stimmt.

Der junge Journalist Joe Talbert Jr. stößt auf eine Geschichte, in der es um den Mord an einem Joseph Talbert in einer kleinen Stadt im Süden von Minnesota geht. Könnte dieser Mann sein Vater gewesen sein? Doch keiner der Einwohner hat viel über den Toten zu sagen - abgesehen davon, dass er ein Mistkerl war und sein Tod längst überfällig. Die Suche wird für Joe zu einer Reise durch ein gefährliches Labyrinth aus Täuschungen und Lügen. Und nun ist er selbst in Todesgefahr.