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Summary
Summary
Who was James Putnam? Answering that question may mean salvation for Alexander Rupert, a Minnesota detective whose life is in a serious downward spiral. A Medal of Valor winner, Alexander is now under subpoena by a grand jury on suspicion of corruption. He's been reassigned to the Frauds Unit, where he is shunned by his fellow detectives, and he fears his status-seeking wife may be having an affair. When he happens across a complex case of identity theft, Alexander sees an opportunity to rehabilitate his tattered reputation. But the case explodes into far more than he could have expected, putting him in the path of trained assassin Drago Basta, a veteran of the Balkan wars who has been searching for 'James Putnam' for years. As his life spins out of control, Alexander's last hope may be his older brother, Max, a fellow police detective who steps in to try to save his brother from the carnage his investigation has let loose.
Author Notes
Allen Eskens has worked as a criminal defense attorney for twenty years. He has taken creative writing classes through the MFA program at Minnesota State University, the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, and the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. His first book, The Life We Bury, was published in 2014.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Edgar-finalist Eskens follows his highly praised debut, The Life We Bury (2014), with an equally compelling second novel starring Alexander Rupert, a disgraced Minneapolis police detective. Toiling away in the fraud unit while a grand jury investigates charges that he stole drug money, Rupert happens upon a case that he believes could return him to the department's good graces: a man who faked his death 15 years earlier in a boat accident off Coney Island has just died for real in a Minnesota car crash. Rupert wants to know who James Putnam really was and why he staged the coverup. While his own life continues to spiral toward the drain, Rupert finds himself increasingly attracted to Putnam's former live-in girlfriend, a temptress with elusive motivations. Eskens moves his plot along in a spare, sure-handed manner, avoiding clichés and stock situations. Elevating the story further are several unexpected turns down the homestretch, as well as several well-crafted characters who serve as examples of how good people can succumb to weakness. Readers looking for a new voice should pay attention to Eskens. Agent: Amy Cloughley, Kimberley Cameron Agency. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Minneapolis detective Alexander Rupert's life is in a downward spiral. Reassigned from the discredited narcotics division to the fraud unit, he's about to face a grand jury investigating corruption, and he's just learned that his wife is having an affair. Then a stolen-identity case turns up that may be his road to redemption. A man known as James Putnam, recently killed in a car crash, turns out to be Jericho Pope, who supposedly died years earlier in an explosion at sea that also killed Richard Ashton, the CEO of defense contractor Patrio. But Ashton was actually murdered by sociopathic Serbian assassin Drago Basta, on orders of Patrio cofounder Wayne Garland, with the killing recorded on a flash drive obtained by Pope, with which he had been blackmailing Garland. After Pope's death, the hunt for the flash drive is on by Rupert; by Pope's longtime live-in lover, Ianna Markova, who has her own agenda; and by Basta, who's taking care of loose ends. From the author of the highly praised debut The Life We Bury (2014), this is pulse-pounding crime fiction on the dark side.--Leber, Michele Copyright 2015 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
MICHAEL CONNELLY'S maverick cop, Harry Bosch, has been kicked off plenty of important police cases over his long career. But until now, he has never gone over to the dark side to work against the prosecution in a homicide case. In THE CROSSING (Little, Brown, $28), the forcibly retired (and terminally bored) Bosch, a former California detective, breaks faith by taking on a private investigation for his half brother, Mickey Haller. The slick defense lawyer has convinced Bosch that his client, a reformed gangbanger named Da'Quan Foster, is not guilty of murdering Lexi Parks, a well-liked city official who was bludgeoned to death in her bed. But the case still makes Bosch uneasy. "Did he miss the work so much that he could actually cross the aisle and work for an accused murderer?" he asks himself. Never mind that the detective is convinced of Foster's innocence. To his former colleagues, he's a traitor. As an investigator with the sheriff's department puts it to him: "You used to be legit. Used to be. Now not so much." Tough guy that he is, Bosch "could feel his face burning red with humiliation." Overcoming his shame, he vindicates himself by solving an unusually cerebral case that hangs on the provenance of an expensive watch, a $14,000 Audemars Piguet. Like a classic whodunit, the complicated mystery pivots on one small clue. An extra treat for the reader is being able to follow the case from the dual perspectives of the prosecution and the defense. As a career cop, Bosch is well versed in the professional tactics of a police investigation. (Even a casual reading of the tricked-up "discovery package" that every investigating officer is obliged to prepare for the defense attorney puts him in a good humor.) But Haller's vocational talents, being on the shady side, are more like the sleight-of-hand tricks of a con man, and once in a courtroom he suddenly acquires the skills of a magician. Brothers they may be, but at times they seem a lot like an ego and its id. RUTH RENDELL'S FINAL NOVEL, DARK CORNERS (Scribner, $26), is a deliciously diabolical tale on a favorite theme: one person's devouring of a weaker person's identity. Carl Martin is the little mouse that allows itself to be caught by the tail. He lives in a lovely house in London's Maida Vale that he inherited from his father. He recently published a successful novel, and the girl he loves has just moved in with him. Carl may be sitting pretty, but he's just the sort of weak-willed milquetoast Rendell enjoys tearing into little bits. On flimsy grounds, he feels responsible for a friend's death, and his unscrupulous tenant, Dermot McKinnon, being aware of Carl's guilty secret, proceeds to blackmail him in psychologically subtle ways. First, he stops paying the rent. Then, he starts taking over parts of the house. When Carl finally protests ("You're ruining my life"), Dermot points out, "It's you who's doing that." Loss of identity also figures in a parallel plot in which a cipher of a girl named Lizzie Milsom steals the trappings, if not the vivid personality, of a dead woman. All of these fragmented lives eventually intersect, propelled by a supporting cast of endearing eccentrics who, sadly, will not pass this way again. WHEN HEROES GO BAD, the earth trembles, as it does in THE GUISE OF ANOTHER (Seventh Street Books, paper, $15.95), Allen Eskens's cautionary story of guilt, redemption and damnation. As a Minneapolis police detective, Alexander Rupert was a prince of the city - Medal of Valor and all that - until he was caught up in a police corruption scandal that derailed his career and alienated his beloved older brother. "More than anything, he wanted to feel that pride again," seeing hope of salvation in the Putnam case, a police matter too easily dismissed as an accidental drowning at sea. But can he resist the temptations of warm flesh and hot money? Eskens's elegant but chilly prose, like winter in the blood, is well suited to this fiercely told morality tale (and its deeply cynical ending), which is sure to send all of us wretched sinners straight to hell. CHILDHOOD IS a perilous country in Lisa Ballantyne's psychological suspense novels, so bleak and hostile that even grown-ups hesitate to go there. "Margaret Holloway, deputy head teacher, mother, wife, did not know what had happened to her when she was a little girl, and she was terrified to find out." But return she does, in EVERYTHING SHE FORGOT (Morrow/HarperCollins, paper, $14.99), when a traffic pileup on a London highway traps her in her burning car until a hideously scarred stranger risks his life to save her. "The crash. ..." she struggles to explain to her husband. "It's made me remember things." These "things," she fails to add, relate to her rescuer, who lies hospitalized in a coma. Ballantyne makes no real mystery of the relationship between Margaret and her savior, choosing to tell their stories in separate but interlocking chapters. Taken individually, these biographical histories of Margaret and the man she knows as Maxwell Brown give structure to the narrative; taken together, they give it a living, beating heart.
Kirkus Review
A freak accident provides a detective the chance to redeem his good name. The speeding car of a thrill-seeking couple jumps a median in late-night Minneapolis and kills a man in another lane. His license identifies him as James Putnam. But Detective Alexander Rupert, who's lately been transferred to the Forgery and Frauds Unit from the scandal-ridden Joint Drug Enforcement Task Force, finds out from an ambulance chaser that the dead man is actually someone else. Alexander eagerly takes on the case of identity theft as a chance to salvage a career that's under federal investigation. When the dead man's sexy live-in girlfriend, Ianna Markova, lets Alexander see his hard drive, the detective finds records of a tidy fortune and 10 annual deposits of $10,000 each. Alexander's big brother, Max, a homicide detective to whom he's close, pulls strings to get him sent to New York to track down Putnam's real identity. With the help of a feisty detective who might be a good match for the widowed Max, Alexander discovers that in 2001, the imposter, Jericho Pope, was supposedly killed in a boating accident. Instead, he swam to shore, went into hiding, took his roommate Putnam's identity, and started blackmailing the men who tried to kill him. He put certain incriminating videos on a flash drive Alexander wants so he can break the case and offset his former partner's testimony against him, his looming grand jury appearance, his wife's coolness, and even Max's growing doubts. Meantime, a hired gun without a human heart wants the drive too and is targeting everyone who gets in his way. As the bodies pile up, Alexander makes a desperate move that may be his only way out. Eskens (The Life We Bury, 2014) has upped the pace and the stakes in his second novel but with less success. His instincts are best when he focuses on the floundering Alexander and the brother who acts as his conscience. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Alexander Rupert's life is a mess. Indicted by a grand jury and suspected of theft, the disgraced detective has been relegated to the basement fraud division. His wife is cheating on him, and it seems as if nothing will ever go his way. And then Alexander catches a stolen identity case in which a man killed in a car accident turns out to be an impostor. Alexander's instincts immediately tell him there's more to the case than meets the eye, and, before long, he is swept into an investigation involving murder, blackmail, and one of the world's most ruthless assassins. Verdict Readers will be hooked on the probe into the mysterious dead man from the opening chapter. The investigation and clues unfold quickly, and the story reads satisfyingly well. Unfortunately, Eskens (The Life We Bury) gets bogged down in backstory details about hit man Drago Basta, and the storytelling loses momentum. Fans of Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch or Lisa Gardner's Detective D.D. Warren series will likely eat this one up.-Vicki Briner, Westminster, CO © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
