Amos Decker was a professional football player for just one play. A hard helmet to helmet hit left him with permanent changes in his brain in the form of Hyperthymesia (remembering everything that ever happens to him with photographic accuracy) and Synesthesia (in his case seeing colors and/or numbers in relation to events or memories.). After the end of his football career, Decker became a police officer until the next life changing event: the brutal murder of his wife and daughter which sends Decker into a sixteen month downward spiral. When a total stranger comes forward and confesses to the crime the day before a brutal school shooting Decker becomes part of the investigation with his old police partner, the police chief, and a senior FBI agent. For an unknown reason, the killer has targeted Decker and he must figure out why. It is only with Decker's infallible memory that the sparse pieces of evidence begin to make sense.
Baldacci has featured characters with unusual mental abilities in other novels. In this one, two people with extreme mental abilities are pitted against each other in a race to stop the villain before more people end up dead. This book may be his best to date. Kudos to Baldacci for his sensitive treatment of the topic of the transgendered and intersexed and the abuse they too often receive.
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