Not long ago I was talking about David baldacci and second novel from his trilogy about Agent John Puller. Almost at the same time this new title was published, Total memory, with which the American writer begins another series that promises. Great of the genre and very prolific, his ideas and plots seem inexhaustible.

El protagonist that he presents us is totally different from the super-agent Puller, a prototype of almost a superhero. In his youth, Amos Decker suffers a very serious injury. From then on it will become hyperthymesic and of course it will no longer be the same. But you have the worst tragedy. Again a story that it reads in a sigh.

About

Amos Decker was the only young man from Burlington, his hometown, to become a professional football player. But his career ended before it started. A violent blow to the head against that of a rival left him almost dead and removed him from the game forever. But it also left him with some very particular consequences: the hyperthymesia (can't forget anything) and the synesthesia (see in colors).

Twenty years later, he suffers a major tragedy. Is police inspector and when he returns home one night he finds murdered his brother-in-law, his wife, his daughter. The trauma is so great that Decker leaves the Police, goes into a deep depression and loses everything, including his house. Almost living destitute, he barely gets by accepting occasional jobs like private detective.

But a little over a year later, a man surrenders to the Police and confesses to being the author of the crimes. At the same time, a massacre of students and teachers at a Burlington high school. Decker's former boss will ask you to collaborate with them. Decker also sees an opportunity to find out what really happened to his family.

Characters

As it ends, it seems to me that Amos Decker He will not be the only protagonist of the series, but he is certainly the most interesting. Very tall, burly, bearded and too fat. At the age of forty-two, he looks ten years older, as he says, for having stopped caring after the tragedy he has suffered. Occasionally the third person narrator mixes with your voice in the first person and brings us closer to him.

His acquired abilities, as a variant of the savantism syndrome, have also affected behavior and, in a way, has lost empathy. He almost also loses the will to live and we see him considering the suicide on a couple of occasions. In other words, for those of us who have a soft spot for wounded characters, Amos Decker is another of our antiheroes deserving of attention. He hits rock bottom, but like any good protagonist touched by drama, so much of the genre, will fight to seek redemption. And it certainly grabs you.

With him, his ex-partner, the detective Lancaster, also embroider the secondary characteristics of luxury, loyal and brave. And they join the understanding boss shift, an FBI agent with whom Decker will have his pluses and minuses, but with whom in the end he will form a good team. Y the journalist who sneaks onto the scene, drawn to Decker's personality and the connection between his tragedy and the Burlington High School massacre.

Why read it

Because Baldacci knows the formula for success well and here he makes it work again. Fast pacing and great plot in a well-built gear. And a killer original, whose messages to Decker maintain the suspense and are surprising until they find the connection between all.

If I have to put a but, It would be that I was wanting more. That him final I will be somewhat lame, with a feeling of too run over. But otherwise, the reading is easy, it is a novel very entertaining I have already adopted Amos Decker as another of my favorite characters of the year.