The Hidden Man Keeps The Commuting Man Awake

My husband leaves the house at 5:30am every morning to catch the 5:45am train to Boston. The rhythmic clacking of the commuter rail train that early in the morning easily puts many of its riders to sleep on the hour long journey towards Boston. When I heard that he was enjoying a book so much that he was not sleeping on the morning commute, I knew this was information that I had to share! My husband enjoys a variety of genres (including a long standing affection for westerns!) but has lately been reading a lot of mysteries and thrillers (think Lee Child, T. Jefferson Parker, Harlan Coban).

The Hidden Man is the first book he has read by Edgar award winning author David Ellis and he highly recommends it.

Since The Commuting Man is now at work and can’t write his own description, I will cheat and use the back of the book description: Jason Kolarich is a midwestern Everyman with a lineman’s build and an easy smart-ass remark. He’s a young, intelligent maverick, but he’s also struggling with an overwhelming emotional burden—one that threatens to unravel his own life, and possibly the lives of those around him. Twenty-seven years ago, two-year-old Audrey Cutler disappeared from her home in the middle of the night. She was never found. All the detectives had to go on were vague eyewitness accounts of a man running down the Cutlers’ street, apparently carrying someone. Without enough evidence to suggest otherwise, Griffin Perlini—a neighbor with prior offenses against minors—was arrested, but never convicted. The case is long closed when Perlini is murdered nearly thirty years later. Now a man named Mr. Smith appears in Jason Kolarich’s office, saying only that he represents a third party who wants the man charged with murder off the hook and that Kolarich is perfect for the job. The new client: Audrey Cutler’s older brother, Sammy—Kolarich’s estranged childhood best friend—a man he hasn’t seen in nearly twenty years. But when Kolarich starts receiving violent threats from Mr. Smith’s enigmatic employer, he figures out that the secrecy behind this nameless third party—and the key to winning Sammy’s case—is entangled with the mystery of Audrey’s disappearance. With his own life and Sammy’s in the balance, Kolarich has to put aside not only the mounting anxiety of the job but also a heart-wrenching personal tragedy in order to find out what really happened to Audrey all those years ago.