The Deep Dark Descending

by Allen Eskens, R. C. Bray (Read by)

Overview

A homicide detective hunts down his wife's killers while struggling between his thirst for revenge and a twinge of conscience forbidding him to take the law into his own hands. Homicide Detective Max Rupert never fully accepted his wife’s death, even when he believed that a reckless hit-and-run driver was to blame. Haunted by memories both beautiful and painful, he is plagued by feelings of unfinished business. When Max learns that, in fact, Jenni was murdered, he must come to terms with this new information—and determine what to do with it. Struggling to balance his impulses as a vengeful husband with his obligations as a law enforcement officer, Max devotes himself to relentlessly hunting down those responsible. For most of his life, he has thought of himself as a decent man. But now he’s so consumed with anguish and thoughts of retribution that he finds himself on the edge, questioning who he is and what he stands for. On a frozen lake at the US–Canadian border, he wrestles with decisions that could change his life forever, as his rage threatens to turn him into the kind of person he has spent his entire career bringing to justice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781665267618
Publisher:	Tantor
Publication date:	03/01/2021
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.50(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Allen Eskens is the award-winning and USA Today bestselling author of The Life We Bury, The Guise of Another, and The Heavens May Fall. A criminal-defense attorney for twenty-five years, he lives with his wife in Minnesota, where he is a member of the Twin Cities Sisters in Crime.

R. C. Bray is an award-winning audiobook narrator with over 180 titles to his credit. Besides winning five AudioFile Earphones Awards, he won the prestigious Audie Award in 2015 for Best Science Fiction Narration and has been an Audie Award finalist seven times. He has been a finalist for the Voice Arts Award, and in 2014, his narration earned a Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Award. He is also an accomplished producer and voice-over artist, and his voice can be heard in countless TV and radio commercials.

Editorial Reviews

11/27/2017
Eskens’s latest novel featuring detective Max Rupert begins with the Minneapolis homicide cop on a frozen lake in Superior National Forest, facing the killer of his pregnant wife. The big question: is he there as lawman or vigilante? Max continues to ask himself that for nearly the whole novel, which recounts his surprising discovery that his beloved wife Jenni’s death was not a hit-and-run accident but a planned assassination. What follows is his fury-driven solo struggle to find the killer. If Eskens’s tense, fast-paced thriller weren’t hard-boiled enough, actor Bray’s hoarse narration, simmering with anger, carries it to into truly suspenseful territory. His Rupert isn’t just a cop gone rogue, he’s almost uncontrollable. There aren’t many notable women in the novel other than Max’s very understanding partner and a pistol-toting Russian who provides assistance. Bray indicates a change in gender with a slight alteration in delivery (and in the latter case, accent) without slowing the novel’s pell-mell progress or softening its hard mood. It’s a lively performance by Bray, who manages to keep the energy up through to the very end. A Seventh Street paperback. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly - Audio

07/17/2017
In Edgar-finalist Eskens’s engrossing fourth Max Rupert mystery (after 2016’s The Heavens May Fall), the Minneapolis police detective has yet to recover from the death five years earlier of his wife, Jenni—struck by a hit-and-run driver, who was never identified, as she was leaving her administrative job at the Hennepin County Medical Center. Drinking too much and running afoul of his higher-ups, Rupert is close to losing his job, the only thing that gives his life meaning. Then D.A. Boady Sanden, a former friend, presents Rupert with evidence that Jenni’s death was no accident. When a case sends Rupert to Hennepin County Medical to interrogate a murder suspect, Rupert takes the opportunity to visit a coworker of Jenni’s, who sets him on a trail toward identifying his wife’s killer. In the end, Rupert must decide what he’s ready to do to obtain his goal: vengeance for Jenni. Eskens relies too heavily on coincidence, but a well-constructed plot and a sympathetic lead will keep readers turning the pages. Agent: Amy Cloughley, Kimberley Cameron Agency. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"Eskens infuses the old this-time-it's-personal trope with raw urgency, righteous indignation, and enough scorching action to melt every trace of the Minnesota snow in his finest hour to date." ---Kirkus Starred Review

From the Publisher

"Eskens infuses the old this-time-it's-personal trope with raw urgency, righteous indignation, and enough scorching action to melt every trace of the Minnesota snow in his finest hour to date." —Kirkus Starred Review

From the Publisher - AUDIO COMMENTARY

10/01/2017
Minnesota homicide detective Max Rupert has never recovered from the death of his wife, Jenni, initially believed to be the victim of a hit-and-run driver. Struggling with his own demons and alienating his coworkers, Max is in danger of losing the only thing that still matters to him—his job. But after discovering that his wife was murdered, Max is torn between his implacable desire for vengeance and his need to maintain his inherent decency and commitment to law enforcement. VERDICT Edgar Award winner Eskens's fourth mystery (after The Heavens May Fall)—and the third in which Max Rupert appears—takes the "will he or won't he" revenge theme and layers it with darkly convincing action and intricate plotting. Packed with heart-wrenching twists, this bleak book will haunt readers who favor an evocative and compelling sense of dread along with a dose of noir.—ACT

Library Journal

R.C. Bray is the perfect narrator for this dark story of grief and revenge. Homicide detective Max Rupert never believed his wife's death was an accident, and after four years of grieving, he received a recording of a phone call in which the speakers are planning her murder. The action alternates between the days immediately preceding this revelation and the present, in which the man behind her murder is now Rupert’s prisoner. On a frozen lake on the Canadian border Rupert can decide his fate. Bray imbues the descriptions of Rupert's moral and physical struggle with tension, pain, and fatigue. Will Rupert be defeated by the cold before deciding to kill or exonerate his prisoner? Can he find redemption if he survives? C.A.T. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2017 - AudioFile

★ 2017-07-17
Still grieving the wife who died four years ago, Detective Max Rupert (The Heavens May Fall, 2016, etc.) roars into action when evidence mounts that the hit-and-run that killed her was premeditated murder.Boady Sanden, the attorney who ended his unlikely friendship with Max by trashing him on the witness stand, doesn't want to make nice. He doesn't even want to talk. He just wants to drop off a file he's happened to come by that contains a voice recording of two men clearly planning Jenni Rupert's death. Max doesn't recognize either of the two voices. Apart from Detective Niki Vang, the partner he's never truly opened up to, he has no allies in Minneapolis Homicide. And he's already got his hands full with the bizarre case of an automotive fire that nearly killed Dennis Orton, the mayor's Deputy Chief of Staff, and would have killed his girlfriend, Pippi Stafford, if she hadn't already been dead in the back seat. No matter. Max takes on uncooperative witnesses, international sex traffickers, knee-deep corruption in his own department, and everyone else who stands between him and the truth. A series of increasingly nerve-wracking flash-forwards show Max, burning for condign revenge yet reluctant to strike the fatal blow, confronting the man he's become convinced ordered Jenni's murder miles from everywhere on the middle of a frozen lake in subzero January temperatures. Has Max indeed found the guilty party? Will he kill him? And if he does, what kind of peace (and possible sequels) can he expect? Eskens infuses the old this-time-it's-personal trope with raw urgency, righteous indignation, and enough scorching action to melt every trace of the Minnesota snow in his finest hour to date.

Kirkus Reviews