THE LIFE WE BURY

Narrator Zach Villa’s low-key but appealing performance of Eskens’s debut mystery is a true audio pleasure. For an English class on biography, Joe Talbert, a freshman at the University of Minnesota, interviews a convicted rapist and murderer who is paroled in a nursing home while dying of cancer. Joe, along with his beautiful but aloof neighbor, Lila, and his autistic brother, Jeremy, investigates the 30-year-old murder. Joe is a thoroughly decent and responsible character, and Villa renders those qualities perfectly. Jeremy is appropriately slightly wooden-voiced, and their mother is a shrewish drunk. Villa ratchets up the drama and pacing as Joe wades into danger when he identifies a likely alternative killer. He is also a master of evoking the cold loneliness of the rural Minnesota landscape. A.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine [Published: DECEMBER 2015]