The Fallen by David BaldacciMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Jacket Blurb: Amos Decker and his journalist friend Alex Jamison are visiting the home of Alex's sister in Barronville, a small town in western Pennsylvania that has been hit hard economically. When Decker is out on the rear deck of the house talking with Alex's niece, a precocious eight-year-old, he notices flickering lights and then a spark of flame in the window of the house across the way. When he goes to investigate he finds two dead bodies inside and it's not clear how either man died. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. There's something going on in Barronville that might be the canary in the coal mine for the rest of the country.
Faced with a stonewalling local police force, and roadblocks put up by unseen forces, Decker and Jamison must pull out all the stops to solve the case. And even Decker's infallible memory may not be enough to save them.
Read as an audio book.
Premise of the book is Amos and Alex are on vacation visiting Alex's family in Barronville, PA, when Amos stumbles across a murder. Against Alex's wishes, Amos starts to investigate. What he finds is Barronville is a complex mix of decades old resentments, an out of control opiod epidemic, and a new sorting facility that isn't quite what it seems. When Alex's sister's husband dies from a factory accident, and he and Alex are nearly killed in a trailer explosion, Amos knows he's on the right path.
I enjoyed this latest installment with some exceptions.
Alex persuades Amos into coming on vacation with her to visit Alex's family. Amos really didn't want to go and is bored (duh, it's not his family). Amos finds a murder to investigate and Alex is mad because "they" should be spending time with "her" family. After the sister's husband is murdered, Alex expects Amos (a stranger to the family) to help with funeral stuff, then gets mad when he doesn't. This whole Alex dynamic annoyed me. I would have much preferred if she had just let Amos go investigate while she hung out with her sister.
Over use of the term "bereaved" - maybe this doesn't come across in the print version, but on audio it was readily apparent. After Alex's sister's husband died, Amos kept referring to the "bereaved" (sister, daughter, Alex, extended family).
Twice in the novel the characters performed CPR - the author noted the vomiting correctly, however, Amos and Alex's sister wouldn't be moving all that fast due to cracked ribs. If CPR is performed correctly there will be cracked ribs from the chest compression's. Folks are gonna be sore. Real sore. As in you won't be sneezing or laughing for a while sore.
Zoe. I know five/six year olds are bright and precocious, but she did not talk like a five/six year old. Granted, part of this could be the narration, but I did question some of the child's sentence structures.
The animosity toward John Barron came across as almost implausible. Coming from a small down, and currently living in an economically depressed area, I can understand the resentment toward the "have's" from the "have not's", but in this case, the anger toward the Barron's and specifically John Barron felt over the top.
Those are a handful of items that detracted from the overall story. Overall, I did enjoy this, I thought the overreaching plot was engaging, I liked how Amos just keeps plugging away and putting pieces together until everything clicks into place, and I liked how this was done outside of the FBI Task Force. I figured at some point in the series Decker would have to address his memory and synesthesia and it's impermanence and he does so here.
Recommended if you've read the first three in the series.
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