The Last Mile

February 22, 2016
In bestseller Baldacci’s so-so sequel to 2015’s Memory Man, the FBI persuades Amos Decker—a former professional football player, whose career-ending injury left him with some unusual abilities, including an almost perfect memory—to join a new unit that combines special agents and “civilians with special skills” to reopen select cold cases. Decker advocates for a case that appears resolved. Former college football standout Melvin Mars is reprieved minutes from his execution after another convict on death row, Charles Montgomery, confesses to murdering Mars’s parents in their Texas home more than 20 years earlier. Decker feels an affinity for Mars, since the two played against each other once, and Decker also lost family members to a killer. His strong feelings prevail, and his unit looks into whether Montgomery is being truthful and why he waited so long to come forward. Despite his extra brain power, Decker doesn’t leave much of an impression. This entry will work best for readers with a taste for improbable resolutions. Agent: Aaron Priest, Aaron M. Priest Literary Agency.

David Baldacci continues his success with the Amos Decker series. Narrator Kyf Brewer breathes life into Decker and convicted killer Melvin Mars with depth and texture they search across several states for the real murderers of Mars's parents. The second narrator, Orlagh Cassidy, portrays a backstabbing Southern belle whose perfectly venomous charm nearly kills the main characters on their quest to find the perpetrators. Together, the narrators provide listeners with a vibrant story of Decker and Mars's search and the surprising revelations that hit them at every turn. There's nothing routine in this solid whodunit--just striking performances from superb narrators. E.E.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine