New York Times Bestselling author“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 … 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.
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I love the Jonathan Stride series. It’s what brought me to the magic of Brian Freeman’s thrillers and it’s this series that make any Freeman book an automatic buy. Funeral for a Friend, like every other Stride books, tells a wonderful story, peopled with flawed yet sympathetic people (I don’t even think of them as characters anymore; more like old friends), a mesmerizing sense of place (before reading the Stride books, I never would have been so eager to someday see Duluth, MN), and, of course, a suspenseful, mysterious story that kept me turning pages long into the night. Highly recommended…and if you’re new to Freeman, start with the first book, IMMORTAL. I guarantee you’ll be hooked.
I do enjoy a good Jonathan Stride story and this one is no different! Freeman takes us back thirty years to an event that happened and changed peoples lives. Jump to the present day and a seven year disappearance turns into a murder investigation with strings attached to the past, you guessed it, thirty years past! Another good book from one of my favorite authors!
Freeman is the best!
Have read all his books and really like tham
Great read. The characters are well developed and make you want yo read the other novels in the series. Did not want yo put it down
I enjoy this series. Very good. Stride is a complex character.
Brian Freeman is ALWAYS a winner. Never disappoints!
Great book as usual
Many unexpected twists and turns!
I enjoyed this book because the setting was familiar to me being from MN and a graduate of UMD. The characters were realistic and well-rounded. I enjoy guessing where the end will take the reader. This seems to be a part of Freeman’s books. I have enjoyed reading many of them. I like his books because they are all stand-alone stories.
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. The victim … a reporter looking for the woman who made an anonymous claim of rape against a well-known politician.
Stride was the last known person to see this man … but he’s lied to protect someone. Stride is off the case and he is a prime suspect in the man’s murder. His partner, Maggie Bei, is now lead investigator … and that includes questioning Stride.
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.
As with all this author’s books, this is a well-written crime thriller, an action-packed page turner with twists and turns that keep on coming. There are plenty of suspects to watch .. and many buried dark secrets. Although 10th in the series, it can be read as a stand alone. However, I strongly recommend starting at the very beginning of this series for some serious 5-star reading.
Many thanks to the author / Blackstone Publishing / Netgalley for the digital copy of this crime thriller/fiction. Read and reviewed voluntarily, opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.
Lake Superior, Duluth.
The last thing that dying dr. Steve says to his life-long best friend police-chief Jonathan Stride is that he buried the body that (he thinks that) Jonathan killed and that nobody knows about it. Stride knows that he didn’t kill anybody but he has a good idea about the identity of the victim. In his garden, they find the body of Ned Baer, a journalist who disappeared 7 years earlier. Stride was the last man, to see him alive. The journalist came to town to find the woman that anonymously accused politician Devin Card of raping her when she was 17, a woman that did not want to be found. We learn early in the book that this woman is Andrea, Stride’s ex-wife. Did she kill the journalist herself, did Ned kill him to protect her anonymity, or did the politician kill him to get rid of the whole story? As Stride is a suspect in this case because he lied back then about certain aspects and refuses to talk now apart from swearing that he’s innocent, he’s suspended for the time of the inquest. His old enemy Dan Erickson leads the investigation and he would love nothing better than finding Stride guilty.
There’s also a second case that clouds the family life of the Stride family even more. Cat, the runaway teenager that lives with Jonathan and Serena, receives weird notes and photos of herself that prove that she’s being stalked. Things get from bad to worse and she’s allocated a police bodyguard.
The story starts out really slow and as the suspense builds up, it gains momentum and cannot be stopped anymore. You fall from 1 surprise into the next. There are so many twists and turns that I can’t put a number on them. And when you think that you’ve solved the case, there’s yet another new element that changes the picture again.
It’s a shame that I haven’t found this series earlier on. This is number 10 already and there are several references to things that happened in the past and even though this story depends hugely on this past, it’s perfectly possible to read and enjoy this book without having read the others. I advise you to read them in order as I think it will increase your pleasure.
The story alternates constantly between both storylines and even though both cases have nothing to do with each other apart from both involving the Stride extended family, somehow Freeman manages to bring them together in the end.
I thank Blackstone Publishing and Netgalley for providing me with a free ARC; this is my unbiased and honest review of it.
Honestly gratuitous with totally unrealistic characters
I really didn’t like any of the characters in this book but slogged through to the end. Some of the situations were implausible. I wouldn’t select another title from this author.