Autorentext

Brendan Flaherty is from outside Hartford, Connecticut. He went to Washington University in St. Louis, and received his MFA from Boston University. He lives with his wife and two sons. Middleman is his second novel, following his debut, The Dredge.

Klappentext

Struggling with work and fatherhood, Jake Flynn is forced to make an impossible choice when an eccentric, sordid con artist ropes him into a mausoleum heist that could cost him more than he bargained for

As an overworked and underpaid remote worker for a tech company, Jake Flynn feels stuck. His aging parents need care, his young children need attention, and his burnt-out wife needs support. With his boss hounding him at all hours of the day and the seemingly never-ending debts rolling in, Jake is struggling to stay afloat.

When his family moves into their new rental on the other side of their small New England town, his new neighbors only add to his stress. There’s Edwina, the town historian with an increasingly strange newsletter and a secret bubbling at the surface. Her son, Eddie, is a greasy con-man hungry for easy money and with a long-simmering desire for vengeance against Jake’s family. And then there’s Trevor, a lonely 15-year-old desperate to prove his incarcerated father’s innocence but winds up in the wrong place at the wrong time.

At the center of their odd little town, there’s an old cemetery with three mausoleums, each locked up with breathtaking treasures and horrifying secrets of the past. Unable to resist temptation, Eddie concocts a scheme to rob the dead: and he manipulates Trevor and Jake to help pull it off.

Middleman presents an atmospheric and unsettling account of a heist gone wrong and the damning secrets unleashed because of it.