Thewanderingjew

David Baldacci, author; Kyf Brewer and Orlagh Cassidy, narrators

I adore the Amos Decker series! The novels about him are easy to listen to and/or read. The big reveal never comes until the very end, but as the story builds, the mystery is always intriguing and absorbing.

Decker’s family was murdered. His failure to protect them at that time still haunts him, so every year he returns to the town where it happened and visits their graves. When a convicted murderer obtains a compassionate release from a life sentence, because he is terminally ill, and confronts him there, Decker is surprised. The man asked him and his former partner, Mary Lancaster, to prove his innocence, which was highly unusual, since they had been responsible for his conviction. When the man is murdered before he has a chance to be questioned further, Decker wonders, had they sent an innocent man to prison for a murder he didn’t commit? He becomes obsessed with finding out if he had made a mistake because he and his partner had been rookies at the time, and it was their first homicide investigation.
As Decker and Lancaster begin in earnest to re-investigate the case, reevaluating the evidence, a many legged spider is revealed. It veers in several directions with possible criminal activity. It is often hard to tell who is guilty and who is innocent, as the various characters emerge, but in the end, many of the threads are knitted together and the place of each character in the mix is explained.

What seemed to be obvious facts to Decker and Lancaster, had turned out to be easy assumptions instead. Had he and his partner as newly minted investigators, jumped to conclusions in order to have a quick, successful conclusion to their investigation? As bodies pile up and tensions build, occasionally the dialogue gets a bit trite, but most often, it is to reveal a clue or two to the reader. The other problem with the novel is that at the end, there are still pieces of the novel that are not resolved, and one wonders if there is going to be another Decker mystery which will take up the hanging threads, sometime in the future. If there is, I will be sure to read it!