by David Baldacci
This is embarrassing, and rather worrying. I checked today so see what the next book is on our book group’s reading list. The meeting is in two weeks’ time, and the book is this one. I had got it out of the library months ago, when we first selected it, but took it back thinking I would forget it if I read it too soon! But now I had a niggling feeling that I had downloaded it on Kindle.
I go to my Kindle library. It’s not there, but when I search on the author, the book downloads. So yes, I had purchased it at least. And if it’s no longer in my Kindle downloads, maybe I had already read it? Sure enough, the bookmark is at the end of the book. No memories are stirred.
I go back to the beginning of the book. Ah yes, the name Melvin Mars rings a bell. Evidently I have read this book. I am both relieved that I don’t have to read it again – though I believe I quite enjoyed it – and worried that this book has been apparently erased from my memory. True, this is the reason I started a reading log and, later, this blog, as long ago as 2003. But still it is quite alarming. And I suppose I must have read this book within the last month.
So, the story: Melvin Mars, a promising young football star is convicted of murdering his parents, and spends 20 years on death row. Amos Decker, an ex-policeman now working with the FBI, takes up his case. Working with a team of three other agents and specialists, he pursues the case doggedly even when officially stood down. Decker is convinced that Mars is not the murderer, and was framed. It transpires that his parents were not the people he thought they were – they seem to have no past, or rather, they have wiped their past identities, successfully, until Decker gets on the trail.
It’s fairly classic stiff of thrillers, and a tight, interesting story with some great surprises along the way. There’s a lot of American football terminology which goes completely over my head, but that didn’t spoil my enjoyment of this book. Though I can’t say I’ve learned anything about football through reading it.
I would like to have a bit more background on Amos Decker, who evidently appears in an earlier book – Memory Man – and four subsequent ones. Not sure that I’ll be reading any more of these. I enjoy the thriller genre – which I rarely touched in my younger years – but there are so many good authors out there, I would rather ‘shop around’ than stick to one author and, especially, one detective.
A rug and a book 