The /Shadows We Hide by Allen Eskens

Front cover flap

I take this book personally, the fifth by Allen Eskens, I have read each one, but this was released on my November birthday!  A great present to me from me, I had preordered it on Amazon.  I read it  in November almost right after it arrived, all 339 pages,  and will be passing along my hardcopy to our local library. I think that one would be better off to have read the first novel, "The Life We Bury" to know something about the main character Joe Talbert.  This murder novel/ mystery centers on Joe's curiosity about his father, his namesake whom he has never met.  .  Joe is a successful AP reporter in this novel and still taking care of his brother Jeremy, living in Minneapolis with Lila who is studying for her bar exam and still without contact with his  errant mother.  But circumstances build and  Joe faces a crossroads of life, to give another yet second chance to his mother who  surely wore out her second chances in the last novel.  

The book opens with the lyrical writing that draws the

Back cover flap

reader in to turn page after page, "  I'm lying on the hood of my car, my back reclined against m,y windshield, knees bent, fingers laced together on my stomach and breathing relaxed to ease the throb of pain.  I'd like to say that having the tar beat out of me was the low point of my day, but that would be a lie......I feel like I'm in exile, a nomad of sorts, sharing my night with the stars and the trees and the occasional thistle seed that floats by on  the summer breeze."  He stumbles across a story about the murder of a man Joseph Talbert in a small town in southern MN.  And that sets the  turns and twists.  

Another excellent book by Allen Eskens.  A full 5 stars *****.   Buy it, read it.