See More From Book Club Friends

Sign up and log in to post, comment and join the conversation.

Book Club Friends is 100% Canadian 🇨🇦

Allen Eskens
Nothing More Dangerous
Book #6 of the Max Rupert and Joe Talbert series
See the list of Max Rupert and Joe Talbert books in order

Nothing More Dangerous

Missouri native Allen Eskens’ “stunning small-town mystery” (New York Times Book Review) is a necessary exploration of family, loyalty, and racial tension in America and “a coming-of-age book to rival some of the best, such as Ordinary Grace” (Library Journal, starred review).

In a small Southern town where loyalty to family and to “your people” carries the weight of a sacred oath, defying those unspoken rules can be a deadly proposition. After fifteen years of growing up in the Ozark hills with his widowed mother, high-school freshman Boady Sanden is beyond ready to move on. He dreams of glass towers and cityscapes, driven by his desire to be anywhere other than Jessup, Missouri. The new kid at St. Ignatius High School, if he isn’t being pushed around, he is being completely ignored. Even his beloved woods, his playground as a child and his sanctuary as he grew older, seem to be closing in on him, suffocating him.

Then Thomas Elgin moves in across the road, and Boady’s life begins to twist and turn. Coming to know the Elgins — a black family settling into a community where notions of “us” and “them” carry the weight of history — forces Boady to rethink his understanding of the world he’s taken for granted. Secrets hidden in plain sight begin to unfold: the mother who wraps herself in the loss of her husband, the neighbor who carries the wounds of a mysterious past that he holds close, the quiet boss who is fighting his own hidden battle.

But the biggest secret of all is the disappearance of Lida Poe, the African-American woman who keeps the books at the local plastics factory. Word has it that Ms. Poe left town, along with a hundred thousand dollars of company money. Although Boady has never met the missing woman, he discovers that the threads of her life are woven into the deepest fabric of his world.

As the mystery of her fate plays out, Boady begins to see the stark lines of race and class that both bind and divide this small town — and he will be forced to choose sides.

Best Book of the Year: Florida Sun-Sentinel and Library Journal
Finalist for the Minnesota Book Award

Author: Allen Eskens
Published: 2020
Page Count: 320

This page may include affiliate links.

Purchase on:

Amazon
Amazon

Book Club Discussion Questions For Nothing More Dangerous

Nothing More Dangerous
Discuss Nothing More Dangerous With Your Book Club Friends

Do you want to take a deeper dive intoNothing More Dangerous? Chat about themes, characters, settings, plots and let’s celebrate this book for our Book of the Month discussion!

Suggest Nothing More Dangerous

More Book Club Discussions

A Better Man
A Fatal Grace
A Great Reckoning
A Rule Against Murder
A Trick of the Light
A World of Curiosities
All the Devils Are Here
An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s
Beautiful Ugly
Bury Your Dead
Glass Houses
How the Light Gets In
How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future
Iron Lake (20th Anniversary Edition)
Kingdom of the Blind
On Tyranny
State of Terror
Still Life
The Beautiful Mystery
The Boyfriend
The Briar Club
The Brutal Telling
The Crash
The Cruelest Month
The Frozen River
The Grey Wolf
The Housemaid
The Life We Bury
The Long Way Home
The Madness of Crowds
The Mighty Red
The Nature of the Beast
The River We Remember
The Rose Code
The Searcher
The Thursday Murder Club
See All Discussions

Highly Recommended Books by Allen Eskens Book Club Friends

Pirate King
Naked Once More
Tooth and Claw: A Longmire Story
Life Sentences
Hornet's Nest
Stay Hidden
An East End Murder: A Charles Lennox Short Story
Better to Rest
Away in a Manger
Field of Bones
The Handsome Man's de Luxe Café
The Endless Knot
Image in the Lake
No Time for Goodbye
Unnatural History: An Alex Delaware Novel
Transcription
Blood Hunt
Another One Goes Tonight
The Black Box
Guardian Angel: A V.I. Warshawski Novel
A Finer End
Hide and Seek
The Murder Room
Witch
Police: A Harry Hole Novel
Diamond and the Eye
The Sleeping and the Dead
Open Season
Reconstruction
J is for Judgment
Why We Die
The Best American Mystery Stories 2014
Walk the Wire
Nemesis: A Harry Hole Novel
Iron Lake (20th Anniversary Edition)
Cruel and Unusual
The Man Who Died Twice
A Body in the Bathhouse
The Noble Path
Beyond Reach: A Novel
In the Company of Sherlock Holmes
The Last Passenger
Skinwalkers
The Anodyne Necklace
The Accidental Detective
The Witches' Tree: An Agatha Raisin Mystery
Plum Spooky
So Sure of Death
I Will Find You
Blood on Snow
Heaven's Keep
Water Like a Stone
One Was a Soldier
Just One Look
Miracle Cure
Brain Damage
Skeleton Hill
Dear Penthouse Forum
Gravity
Cooking the Books
1989: An Allie Burns Novel
An Obvious Fact: A Longmire Mystery
The Finisher
The Laws of Murder
The Accusers
A Mind to Murder
The Last Mile
Standing in Another Man's Grave
The Cellist
Wild Crimes
Badlands: A Nora Kelly Thriller
Faithless: A Novel
The Traitor Among Us
The Laughter of Dead Kings: A Vicky Bliss Novel of Suspense
Bruno and the Carol Singers: A Christmas Mystery of the French Countryside
Here One Moment
Sunburn
Flying Too High
The Firemaker
Malice at the Palace
Straight into Darkness
Evan's Gate
On the Edge
The Price of Love and Other Stories
Rock with Wings
God Rest Ye
Stranded
A Burial at Sea
Restless in the Grave
There Goes the Bride
Dead or Alive
Death with a Double Edge
Open Season
Shimura Trouble
A Measure of Darkness
One Of Us Is Dead
Dark Sacred Night
The Comforts of Home
The Sugar House
Downfall
The House at Riverton
Death of a Gossip
The Keepsake: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel
City of Bones
The Woman in Blue
Switchblade
Real Tigers
Victims: An Alex Delaware Novel
The Collectors
The Girl from Devil's Lake
Homecoming: A Historical Mystery
Murder in My Backyard
The Copper Peacock
What's Past Is Prologue
Chasing the Dime
Head Wounds
Killing Grounds
Pros and Cons: A Short Story
Headhunters
The Frozen River
Dead Right
The Theory of Death
Never
Hand of Evil
Buckingham Palace Gardens
Big Sky
Peril in Paris
A Morning for Flamingos
Big Little Lies
Clawback
Ward D
The Shapeshifter's Lair
Rage
Long Shadows
Kisscut
The Dark Vineyard
Slow Kill
Look Alive Twenty-Five
False Witness: A Novel
A Cold Blooded Business
An Unmarked Grave
Billy Straight: A Novel
The Guest
Cold Wind
A Christmas Escape: A Novel
A Palm for Mrs. Pollifax
Twilight
Point of Origin
A Cold Heart: An Alex Delaware Novel
Fatal Legacy
Mindgame
Light of the World
Final Account: An Inspector Banks Novel
Shamed
Mexican Hat
Heavenly Pleasures
This Tender Land
The Private Patient
Dead Man's Footsteps
Neon Prey
The Bride's Kimono
Close to Death
Smokin' Seventeen
Swan Peak
Long Lost: A Kate Burkholder Short Story
Rainbow's End: A Richard Jury Mystery
Breaking the Dark
The Seventh Sinner
The Sisters of Glass Ferry
The Next Accident
The Poet
London Rules
The Golden Tresses of the Dead
Lie Down with Lions
Uncharted Waters
The Castlemaine Murders
Revelation
The Match
Death of an Addict
Quietly in Their Sleep
A Gathering of Secrets
Bloodstream
No Night Is Too Long
The Locked Door
M is for Malice
The Forgotten
Terminal Freeze
Her Royal Spyness
Send Bygraves
Death of a Stranger: A William Monk Novel
Journey to Munich
The Keeper of Lost Causes
Against the Grain
Winter's Child
A Pale Horse
Playing With Fire
A Noble Radiance
Touchstone
Murder on the Ile Sordou
Kingdom of the Blind
A Traitor to Memory
The Healers
In the Dead of Night
Spider Bones
Sometimes I Lie
Trust Your Eyes
Ashworth Hall
Moon Music: A Novel
The Dead Will Tell
The Grave Tattoo
Started Early
The Fifth Witness
Prayers for the Dead
The Third Gate
Two Graves
Bad Little Falls
Death in Holy Orders
Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd
Righteous Prey
The Twelve Clues of Christmas
Murder 101
The Grave Maurice
Saving Faith
The Grownup
The Sound of Broken Glass
Baltimore Blues
The Widow's Husband's Secret Lie: A Satirical Novella
Hunting Season
Death Without Company: A Longmire Mystery
Leaving Everything Most Loved
A Night Too Dark
Dismissed with Prejudice
Hornet Flight
Deep Storm
Eye of the Needle
Blood Trail
Pronghorns of the Third Reich
A Fatal Grace
S is for Silence
Elevator Pitch
What Came Before He Shot Her
Bertie and the Seven Bodies
Dangerous Minds
A Hidden Secret: A Kate Burkholder Short Story
Bertie and the Tinman
The Fourth Sacrifice
A Christmas Vanishing: A Novel
Not Dark Yet
Death in Darkness
Hangman: A Decker/Lazarus Novel
With Child
Finders Keepers
The Secret Encounter
3 Truths and a Lie
India Gray
The Grey Wolf
Pay Dirt: A V.I. Warshawski Novel
The Vanishing Man
Dead Water
I Am the Only Running Footman
The St. Zita Society
Farriers' Lane
Vertigo 42: A Richard Jury Mystery
Gone Missing
Outsider
Find You First
The Law of Innocence
Metro Girl
A Sunlit Weapon
Rather be the Devil
A Christmas Beginning
A Dying Light in Corduba
A Silent Death
Hell's Corner
Foul Matter
Mystery: An Alex Delaware Novel
The Grove of the Caesars
In Plain Sight: A Kate Burkholder Short Mystery
Life Support
The Sinner: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel
Birds of Prey
Death Comes to Pemberley
Winter Study
Bootlegger's Daughter
No Honor Among Thieves: An Ali Reynolds Novella
Chinese Whispers
Master and God
Murder on the Red River
Nobody Walks
Crooked River
Gone: An Alex Delaware Novel
Through the Window
Hard Truth
Den of Iniquity
Missing Joseph
Rules of Prey
Silken Prey
The Neighbor
Until It's Over
Garden of Lamentations