Memory Man
by David Baldacci
Reviewed by: Ralph Bender, MBA, CFP®
A helmet-to-helmet gridiron collision causing permanent injury plays on the current awareness of football’s inherent violence. But Baldacci turns hyperthymesia and synesthesia into aninteresting if unusual character in his protagonist, Amos Decker, who becomes a cop after the abrupt end of his athletic career.
There is no evidence that head trauma can trigger either of Decker’s conditions. Hyperthymesia is the inability to forget details of events one has experienced. It is a very rare condition. Synesthesia, likewise rare, is where one of the senses triggers involuntary experiences in a different sensory pathway, like seeing colors as numbers or feeling smells as if touched.
Baldacci’s plot uses another contemporary issue as the plot, a mass shooting at the local high school, but there is no suspect and solving the crime takes Decker back into partnership with many of his former police colleagues.
From cover to cover, Memory Man is a good story, the introduction of a new series which I look forward to reading.
TRACKING #1-687197