Finished Fr 12/15/23
This is a hardback that Janny loaned me. It's another Amos Decker book and I was surprised to learn that his is the first book in this series!
Amos was injured in a football game and after the tackle he was able to remember everything. He also is able to 'see' colors that represent emotions.
His wife, daughter, and brother-in-law were brutally murdered and in this book you find out 'why' and 'who'.
There is a school shooting and this killer is linked to the Decker murders.
A young hermaphrodite was raped and nearly killed and this trauma caused her to have more 'brain power' like Amos's condition.
The hermaphrodite appears in the novel both as a man and a woman. 'She/He' interacts with Amos as a man and a woman and he is unable to recognize the deception until later.
This person targets Amos because in therapy (they both were treated for their 'advanced brain power) Amos said that he wanted to become a policeman and this enraged the hermaphrodite.
She shoots up the school and kills the men that were responsible for her rape.
The school is near an abandoned military installation and this facility was crisscrossed with tunnels that were planned to be used as bomb shelters in the fifties. Amos is able to deduce how the shooter was able to commit the crimes.
An evil German is actually manipulating the hermaphrodite to make her kill.
Amos is able to kill them both.
From the book's page at Kirkus Reviews:
"Perennial bestseller Baldacci unveils an offbeat hero with an unusual skill set and tragic past who takes on the evil mastermind behind a devastating school shooting.
Amos Decker went off the rails 15 months ago when the Burlington police detective returned home from his shift to find someone had cut his brother-in-law’s throat, shot his wife, Cassie, in the head, and strangled his 9-year-old daughter, Molly. The case still hasn't been solved, and in his grief and despair, Decker leaves the police department. After a bout with homelessness, he settles in as a small-time private investigator operating out of the hotel room in which he also lives. The 42-year-old Decker is overweight and out-of-shape, but he was once a professional football player. During his time in the NFL, he took a hard hit, and the traumatic brain injury induced a rare condition known as hyperthymesia—he can’t forget any detail about anything he experiences. When his former partner, Mary Lancaster, tells him a man named Sebastian Leopold has confessed to killing his family, Decker lies his way into the jail to see the guy. At the same time, a bloody school shooting takes place at his old stomping grounds, Mansfield High School, leaving many dead. The FBI shows up and the BPD brings the obese ex-cop in as a consultant. But could everything be connected? Once Decker starts unraveling the threads, it begins to look like it, and soon he’s following trails that no one but he can see, much less interpret. The killer’s motive seems tenuous, at best, and the killer’s trail is difficult to follow, but Decker, who has no discernible social skills and a tendency to abruptly disappear, proves a quirky, original antihero with a definite method to his madness.
Although the crimes and their perpetrators are far-fetched, readers will want to see Decker back on the printed page again and again."
I am going to check the library and see if more books in the Decker series are available in Ebooks.
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