Amos Decker 5
My version: Paperback
Genre: Fiction Police, FBI, Murder
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing, Macmillan, Pan Books
First published: 2019
ISBN: 978-1509874415
Pages: 586
Bought
From the cover:
FBI consultant Amos Decker returns to the scene of a family tragedy in a grim act of commemoration and is confronted by more than just painful memories.
A felon on a mission.
When Decker returns to Burlington, Ohio, he is tracked down by his first homicide arrest, Meryl Hawkins, a man who still maintains his innocence.
A rookie’s mistake.
With Hawkins recently released from his life sentence, Decker finds himself questioning what had once seemed watertight evidence. Is the real killer still out there?
A murderer at large.
As the body count rises in a new crime spree, Decker and his former partner Mary Lancaster dig deeper and reopen the old case – and old wounds.
Well, it’s a good, readable, and interesting book with well-done scenes that don’t revolve solely around murder and police detective work. I read it in large chunks until around two-thirds through, where it got a little bogged down, and something that had bothered me from the beginning started to irritate me even more. And in the end, my suspicions proved to be correct.
Without giving away too much of the plot, imagine you are an FBI agent like Decker, and you encounter a convicted criminal who has been released from jail early. He claims to be dying and asks you to revisit his case. You make inquiries and express your concerns to the current police chief at your former workplace, who clearly doesn’t appreciate you. Shortly after, the released criminal is murdered. What would your next move be? Would you wander around aimlessly wondering what happened, or would you suspect that there might be a leak at the police station?
Furthermore, another character, who was a drug-addicted teenager when Decker initially mishandled the case, has now turned her life around and enjoys a life of luxury. Shouldn’t this raise some red flags for Decker? Instead of acknowledging her transformation and asking for details, like “how did you do it, and where did the surgery money come from?,” all he says is, “I see you turned your life around, good for you.” He interviews her multiple times, yet none of these/my suspicions ever seem to cross his mind. He doesn’t describe the girl, as I can remember, that she was wearing long sleeves, would have been better than the nothing we get.
Admittedly, if all of this was addressed promptly, the book would be significantly shorter, perhaps around 150 pages instead of 500. However, these issues reall should not have been overlooked.
Unfortunately, the book lacked tension throughout, and the reveal of who or what was behind everything was anticlimactic. Even during the most intense moments, I never felt genuinely concerned for the characters’ well-being, which I believe should have been the intention.
While there were additional grammatical errors that caught my attention, overall, I still found the book to be quite good. Once I set aside the frustration of the aforementioned points, I appreciated the relatively cliché-free style of this slick American-style thriller. The author’s strength really seems to lie in writing about psychological issues with great empathy, and I believe he should have a go at a non-crime thriller, looking at some of the psychological issues he puts forward very well here.
You can buy Redemption from Amazon
Couldn't I Just Tell You 