Saving Emma

 

Saving Emma by Allen Eskens

Boady Sanden #2

Mystery

2023 Mulholland Books

Finished on December 18, 2023

Rating: 4/5 (Very Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

A lawyer's race to reveal a wrongful conviction collides with the dark shadow of a murder in his own home in this propulsive and perfectly-plotted new thriller from award-winning writer Allen Eskens.

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.

Ben's daughter, Emma, has lived with Boady and Boady's wife Dee ever since that awful night. Now fourteen years old, Emma has been growing distant, and soon makes a fateful choice that takes her far from the safety of her godparents. Desperate to bring her home, and to free an innocent man, Boady must do all he can to investigate Elijah's case while fighting to save the family he has deeply come to love.

Written with energy, propulsion, and his characteristic pathos and insight, Eskens delivers another pitch-perfect legal thriller that reveals a twisted murder and explores faith, love, family, and redemption along the way.

I can't remember the last time I read a book (and one with more than 300 pages) in a single day. I could not put this one down! Eskens' thrillers are the proverbial page-turners, and I'm hooked. It's tempting to read the remaining books on his backlist, but I'm going to try to spread them out, maybe reading one a month. This is another one of Eskens' that I've read out of order, but I don't mind. Not one bit.