Amos Decker was the school football star. Huge and towering, he had a formidable physique which, coupled with a lot of hard work, saw him to college football and through drafts to a pro-football team. On the first day, he has a violet helmet-to-helmet with which knocked him unconscious, off the field, and out of the game for good. But the knock left him with improbable side-effects, Hyperthymesia, meaning he can never forget anything, and synesthesia, meaning he associates colours with numbers, moods and environments.
He gets back to a normal life… detective job in his local police force, wife, kid… until that life is destroed when his family is brutally murdered, and the case is never solved. The depression of losing his family sends him to the streets, and after several years of homelessness, he starts over as a PI. His life is shaken up again when there’s a school shooting in his town, and the police department ropes him in for his unique skills. But that is just the start of a series of murders, which seem to be set up specifically to challenge his skills and abilities…
There are many things in this book that I suspect we are supposed to exclaim dramatically at and be impressed by, but they’re flimsy at best. The story is full of plot holes - the detectives ignore key pieces of evidence to prolong the mystery, instead looking into other dead ends. It seems as though except for Decker, everyone is particularly incompetent, or at least, they are written that way.
Also, the “motive” did not make any sense. I do not think the reasons given in this book added up to the sum of the crimes at all. Even in a very distressed mind, with Decker having paid a huge price already, the exceedingly large number of body count seems… inconsistent for someone who is described as intelligent.
Franky, not worth reading.