Amos Decker — the FBI consultant with a perfect memory — returns to solve a gruesome murder in a booming North Dakota oil town in the newest thriller in David Baldacci’s #1 New York Times bestselling Memory Man series.
Synopsis
When Amos Decker and his FBI colleague Alex Jamison are called to London, North Dakota, they instantly sense that the thriving fracking town is ripe for trouble. The promise of a second gold rush has attracted an onslaught of newcomers all hoping for a windfall, and the community is growing faster than houses can be built. The sudden boom has also brought a slew of problems with it, including drugs, property crimes, prostitution — and now murder.
Decker and Jamison are ordered to investigate the death of a young woman named Irene Cramer, whose body was expertly autopsied and then dumped in the open — which is only the beginning of the oddities surrounding the case. As Decker and Jamison dig into Irene’s life, they are shocked to discover that the woman who walked the streets by night as a prostitute was a teacher for a local religious sect by day — a sect operating on land once owned by a mysterious government facility that looms over the entire community.
London is a town replete with ruthless business owners, shady government officials, and religious outsiders, all determined to keep their secrets from coming out. When other murders occur, Decker will need all of his extraordinary memory and detective skills, and the assistance of a surprising ally, to root out a killer and the forces behind Cramer’s death. . . before the boom town explodes.
Richard writes
Not one of Baldacci’s finest.
Baldacci is enjoyed because he can link words into suspenseful, exciting narratives. In Walk the Wire, he relies too much on the dialogue between his protagonists for the development of the story. It makes the reading feel like being a ping pong ball in the story, bouncing one direction, then back, then forward again without really scoring a point.
Amos Decker, the memory man, usually has many scenes throughout other stories where there is a suspenseful description using his memory, an amazing photographic tool that helps him recall the smallest detail of an event or crime scene later on in the story. The other feature his mind has is that he sees colours when his emotion is triggered; sensing death, he sees blue everywhere. These tools are intriguing ploys used in other books to develop a feeling of tension in the story. Regrettably, they are used minimally in this story.
Because the story relies so much on dialogue, at times it becomes confusing and demanding of concerted attention to remember who is who and what is transpiring. The plot is a good one, modern, almost plausible in a good setting. The plotline unfolds nicely keeping the reader focused on questions that Baldacci tosses out on the pages to keep the reader focussed. However, again, the overabundance of dialogue is like putting too much sauce on the pasta…no matter how good it is, it takes away from the whole dish. Such is Baldacci’s lastest, hunger satisfied but with some unsatisfying taste.
Still, Baldacci at his worst, serves a dish better than many other writers, just not his best this time.
