Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme. Read the rules and more teasers at The Purple Booker. Anyone can play along.
Memory Man is the first book in a new series by David Baldacci, featuring new private detective Amos Decker. A devastating injury and near-death experience on the football field during his debut NHL game rewires his brain, giving him autistic-like thought patterns, including hyperthymesia, synesthesia, issues with social behaviors, etc. Amos Decker is not the only nontypical character. The perp in this story also has neurodiversity and a physical condition which I won’t spoil, but which I’m not sure Baldacci really understood and did his research on. I enjoyed the peek into Amos Decker’s brain, and I do think his hyperthymesia and synesthesia were described and handled well.
He should have pulled his phone and hit 911 at that very moment. He knew better. He knew not to stampede around a crime scene, for that was what his home had become by virtue of the dead man, killed by violent means
David Baldacci, Memory Man
Amos Decker’s life changed forever—twice.
The first time was on the gridiron. A big, towering athlete, he was the only person from his hometown of Burlington ever to go pro. But his career ended before it had a chance to begin. On his very first play, a violent helmet-to-helmet collision knocked him off the field for good, and left him with an improbable side effect–he can never forget anything.
The second time was at home nearly two decades later. Now a police detective, Decker returned from a stakeout one evening and entered a nightmare–his wife, young daughter, and brother-in-law had been murdered.
His family destroyed, their killer’s identity as mysterious as the motive behind the crime, and unable to forget a single detail from that horrible night, Decker finds his world collapsing around him. He leaves the police force, loses his home, and winds up on the street, taking piecemeal jobs as a private investigator when he can.
But over a year later, a man turns himself in to the police and confesses to the murders. At the same time a horrific event nearly brings Burlington to its knees, and Decker is called back in to help with this investigation. Decker also seizes his chance to learn what really happened to his family that night. To uncover the stunning truth, he must use his remarkable gifts and confront the burdens that go along with them. He must endure the memories he would much rather forget. And he may have to make the ultimate sacrifice.
