David Baldacci has been writing thrillers for 21 years now, his first being Absolute Power which was turned into a movie featuring the legendary Clint Eastwood and Gene Hackman.
The Fallen, is Baldacci’s 4th thriller in the Amos Decker series and it was Amos in the Memory Man that first got me into reading Baldacci books. Amos Decker is a former American Footballer turned cop turn FBI agent who as a result of a head injury sustained whilst playing American football has a perfect memory recall from everything and anything he does. As a cop, 20 years after suffering his head injury he came home to find his wife and daughter brutally murdered and since that time he has crusaded to right wrongs and solve brutal killings.
In The Fallen, we find Amos taking a vacation with his FBI partner Alex Jamison to visit her sister for Alex’s nieces birthday in the town of Baronville, so named after John Baron the first who made his riches in the area and treated the locals and his only family badly. His descendants were left poor and despised by the townsfolk amd the latest In the line of John Baron’s is left in the decreped old mansion house and outcast from all those that live around him as they believe him still to be wealthy.
Whilst there and sitting in the garden Amos notices a strange flickering of light from the house that they back onto and he goes to investigate. What he finds is two bodies, one hung with a pool of blood underneath it and the second with no obvious signs of cause of death.
Decker and Jamison get involved with the local police to look at the murders (and two previous murders) and the fingers gradually start to point to John Baron. Decker amd Jamison Risk there lives trying to solve the murders and for the first time after another blow to the head, Amos’ perfect recall starts to falter. Did Baron really commit the murders or is someone trying to frame him??
With drug abuse, insurance frauds and murders, The Fallen takes us through a number of plot twists and turns along the way as Amos and Jamison do their best to solve it. I wasn’t given much in the way of clues as to who in Baronsville was behind the murders until just before the end of the book so it really was a bit of a cliffhanger. Having said that, I thought some of the storyline was a little far fetched and was pushing the boundaries of the thriller fiction format.
I have to date enjoyed all of the Amos Decker books but sadly this was the weakest and most unbelievable of them all. Having said that the bits I did enjoy I found gripping and for this fact only I rate The Fallen as a 6 out of 10.
I have given some thought about when I would read this on a cruise (if I was lucky enough to be going on one right now !!) and I concluded that it’s probably one of those books best read on a grey sea day in doors whilst drinking a tea or coffee ina quiet and secluded spot.
So to find out more about David Baldacci and all of his books go to :
https://davidbaldacci.com/
Happy Cruising !!
Canberralover
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