November 25, 2024
The Hole They Dug for You
Jodi M. Hinman
TellofIt Publishing (2024)
ISBN: 979-8-9915198-0-9
Woman Rescues Man Buried Alive in Gripping New Suspense Novel
The Hole They Dug for You begins with a shocking moment. Recently widowed Ellie Bauer is out in the woods looking for her dog who has run away when she hears people shouting. Soon she is secretly spying on a volatile scene. A man is being held captive by a group of other men. They are accusing him of something he denies doing. Ellie finds it is all she can do not to reveal her presence when she suddenly watches the captive man be thrown into a hole the other men had dug. Next thing she knows, he is being shot and then buried. Ellie breathlessly sees it all.
After the killers leave, Ellie feels compelled to go to the grave and say a prayer for the man, only to hear him moaning. Suddenly, Ellie finds herself desperately trying to dig him out of the pit, figure out how to bring him home, and care for him.
Once she gets him home, Ellie realizes he is the teacher from New York, Evan Heyerdahl, who has been reported missing on the news. But what is he doing in the woods near her home in Upper Michigan, and who were those men who tried to kill him?
Evan doesn’t help matters, being largely unconscious at first and then belligerent toward Ellie once he wakes. Perhaps worst of all, Ellie lives half an hour from the nearest hospital and her cell phone has gone dead so she has to care for him herself rather than risk driving him to the hospital. Once Evan realizes Ellie is friend and not foe, he begs her not to call the authorities from fear his would-be murderers will be after him again.
Ellie wonders how long she will be able to hide Evan, and when he begins to express attraction for her, she also wonders if her heart is ready to love again after losing her husband.
And that is only the beginning of this wild ride of a story that will keep readers in suspense and guessing from the first to the last page. For a debut novel, The Hole They Dug You is masterfully plotted, holds the reader’s interest on every page, and includes the romance that keeps us deeply involved with the characters as they face life-threatening situations. I would put it on the shelf between Stephen King’s Dolores Clairborne and Steve Hamilton’s Alex McKnight thrillers set in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Hinman’s characters are real people, and hints at their backstories help us understand their motives and the actions they take or fail to take. The plot twists are both intense and plausible. My only disappointment was that the book ended as quickly as it did. I wanted to find out more about what happened to the characters, but it is always a good thing to leave a reader wanting more.
I welcome Jodi M. Hinman as a new voice in the suspense genre, and I hope more books will soon spring from her pen.
For more information about Jodi M. Hinman and The Hole They Dug for You, visit Amazon.
— Tyler R. Tichelaar, PhD and award-winning author of The Mysteries of Marquette