Allen Eskens | Fiction 2015

The Lexus jumped the median In Minneapolis and crashed headlong into a Porsche.  That’s what happens when you are busily having sex and driving at the same time.  When the Highway Patrol arrived at the scene, they found the two occupants of the Lexus half-naked but still alive.  The poor guy in the Porsche, James Erkel Putnam, was driving in the wrong place at the wrong time.  He was dead.  Only, it turns out, he was not actually James Putnam.  Who was he?  That’s when the mystery begins.

Detective Alexander Rupert was recently demoted to the Fraud unit, due to his suspected theft of cash from his dealings with dealers in Narcotics.  But this juicy case lands in his lap, as he tries to figure out who was masquerading as James Putnam.  And why Putnam was so rich.

The story is good; Esken’s writing again engaging.  I read the whole book while Amtraking up to Bellingham, Washington.  I marked it three hearts instead of four because the bad guy killed people gratuitously.  There was just more murder than necessary.  For example, he needed to get Putnam’s girlfriend out of their house for a day, so he killed her mother.  To me, it felt like Eskens was simply being lazy.  He could have had the assassin break Mom’s hip or some such.

All In all, a good story with a diabolical plot.