Review of "The Fix: An Amos Decker 'Memory Man' Mystery" by David Baldacci

This is the third book in David Baldacci's 'Amos Decker' series, but it provides enough background information to be read as a standalone.

*****

Amos Decker, 6'5" tall and over 300 pounds, was a professional football player until a massive hit ended his career and left him with hyperthymesia and synesthesia.



The hyperthymesia gives Decker a permanent detailed memory of everything he's ever seen or experienced - like a combination photo album/video in his head. And the synesthesia makes Decker see things in false colors - like death scenes glowing blue. Unfortunately, Decker's hyperthymesia doesn't allow him to dim the memories of his dead wife and child, who were murdered a few years ago.

On the upside, Decker's phenomenal memory helped him in his career as a police detective, and he now works for the FBI.....on a team that investigates crimes. Decker's FBI partner is Alex Jamison, a woman who understands his problems and has his back.



Decker is on his way to a meeting in the FBI's Hoover Building in Washington DC when he sees a man shoot a woman in the head, then turn the gun on himself. The killer is identified as Walter Dabney, a former employee of the National Security Agency (NSA) who now consults with various government agencies, including the FBI.



And the dead woman is identified as Anne Berkshire, a substitute teacher at a Catholic school and a volunteer for a local hospice.



At first, the crime seems inexplicable since Dabney is a successful, happily married man with four grown daughters. As Decker's team investigates, though, they learn that Dabney had an inoperable brain tumor and an aneurysm, which would have killed him within months. Moreover, Dabney recently paid 10 million dollars to cover a huge gambling debt.

As for Berkshire, she seems to be an enigma. Despite having a modest salary, the teacher owned a multimillion dollar condominium and a very expensive Mercedes.



On top of that, Berkshire's searchable past ends ten years ago, beyond which there is no record of her.

Dabney's wife and daughters are unable to provide any information about the tragedy. They're grief stricken by Dabney's death and flummoxed by the gambling obligation. Or are they?



Things are more complicated than they seem, and get even more obscure when another murder occurs.

Decker's team is in the midst of investigating the Dabney murder/suicide when Agent Harper Brown from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) waltzes in, says she's taking over the case for national security reasons, and demands all the FBI's files.



Of course Decker isn't about to let his case get hijacked, and continues to make inquiries - raking his prodigious memory for relevant clues.



The DIA and FBI end up working together, which works out well all around.

To reveal more about the mystery would give away spoilers, so I'll just say the story has lots of twists, Decker and Jamison run up against some extremely dangerous people, and the book has a dramatic climax.

A secondary thread of the story involves Decker and Jamison becoming apartment mates and building managers in a run-down edifice recently purchased by Melvin Mars - a man they helped in a previous book. Melvin plans to upgrade the tenement to provide nice apartments for low-income families.



As residents of the old building, Decker and Jamison become acquainted with a tenant named Tomas Amaya and his eleven-year-old son Danny.



Amaya is on the outs with neighborhood gangbangers, and Decker's interference in the situation leads to grave danger for himself and Jamison. This secondary plot introduces a second set of 'bad guys', which led to some confusion (for me) about which criminals did what.

For romance fans, there's a budding love story in the novel, which leads to friction between the female characters.....but not for the reasons you might think. There's also an interesting theme about the damage caused by sports-enhancement drugs, which I found intriguing.

All in all, I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to fans of thrillers.

Rating: 3 stars