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The Life We Bury

Book
The Life We Bury by Allen Eskens, and Zach Villa

As seen:

By Allen Eskens, and and, Zach Villa

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1 review

Reviews

25 May 2020

Oundle Crime

This is a good book – set in Minnesota, in and around Minneapolis. The story is about a young college student, Joe, who for a school assignment goes to interview a man dying from cancer in a nursing home, to describe a defining moment in this man’s life. The man is a convicted paedophile, rapist and murderer, out on parole. He’s also a Vietnam War hero. Joe and his sceptical neighbour (and eventual girlfriend) at first are convinced that the man is guilty on all counts, but they can’t quite reconcile this with his war record. They start to investigate and soon find discrepancies, which the defence team 30 years earlier did not discover.

With the help of Joe’s autistic brother, they manage to crack a code in the murder victim’s diary, which suddenly casts an entirely different light on the events. In doing so they begin to realise that the convicted man is actually innocent. They take the case back to the police asking them to look again and absolve the man before he dies. In doing so they put themselves in danger, because of course the real killer gets to hear about it and needs to shut them up and destroy their evidence before it goes any further. I listened to this as an e-audiobook and found it very compelling. It’s well written and exciting
Review by Freyja

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