Funeral for a Friend
A Jonathan Stride Novel
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4.5 • 20 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
“You’re safe, Stride. I found the body at the Deeps. I buried him.”
Jonathan Stride’s best friend, Steve Garske, makes a shocking deathbed confession: he protected Stride by covering up a murder. Hours later, the police dig up Steve’s yard and find a body with a bullet hole in its skull.
Stride is pretty sure he knows who it is. Seven years ago, an out-of-town reporter disappeared while investigating anonymous allegations of rape against a prominent politician. Back then, the police believed that the reporter drowned at a dangerous swimming hole called the Deeps … but the discovery of the body changes everything. Now Stride’s partner, Maggie Bei, is forced to ask Stride an uncomfortable question: Did you kill him?
Stride is obviously hiding things. He was the last person to see the reporter alive. And he admits lying to Maggie about that meeting, but won’t tell her why. With suspicion in the murder pointing at him, Stride finds himself off the case and on leave from the Duluth Police.
His only ally in clearing his name is his wife, Serena, who retraces the reporter’s investigation into the explosive allegations. The clues all point to a hot Duluth summer years earlier that everyone in town would prefer to forget.
Someone was willing to kill rather than let those long-ago secrets come out, and the suspect with the strongest motive … is Stride.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Thriller Award winner Freeman's deftly plotted 10th Jonathan Stride novel (after 2018's Alter Ego), the Duluth, Minn., police lieutenant's best friend, Steve Garske, admits to Stride on his deathbed to burying a body to protect Stride. Stride immediately informs his superiors, knowing if it turns out to be the body of reporter Ned Bauer he'll be implicated in Bauer's death, since the police know he was the last person to see Bauer alive. Shortly after Garske dies, the police dig up Bauer's remains in Stride's yard. Bauer, who came to Duluth seven years earlier to investigate 30-year-old anonymous rape accusations against a prominent politician, has a bullet hole in his skull. Bauer was believed to have drowned at the time, and Stride is now the prime suspect in his murder. Meanwhile, Cat Mateo, a teenage runaway Stride and his wife have taken under their wing, has been receiving a lot of unwanted attention resulting from the publicity surrounding her surviving a sexual assault attempt by a Hollywood celebrity, who came to town to shoot a movie in the previous book. Grateful MeToo survivors have sent Cat messages, but she's unnerved when someone local sends her a threatening picture of herself. Surprising connections between her case and Stride's soon emerge. The undercurrent of misogyny in this tale about the effects of sexual violence may put off some readers. Fans of grittier crime novels should be satisfied.
