The Fallen by David Baldacci

Another book in the series about Amos Decker, the memory man.  In this volume, Amos has accompanied his partner, Alex Jamison, on vacation to see her sister, whose husband was recently promoted to a management position in a fulfillment center.  Amos sees a flicker in an empty house behind them, sees a plane in the sky and hears an odd noise.  He worries that a fire has started and so runs to the house to check it out and discovers a body hanging above blood.  Everything goes downhill from there with murders happening one after the other.  There is a descendent of the man who built the town and named it for himself, there are suspected bad cops and there are bad cops.  And there is a drug mill in town and a conspiracy to steal the rich guy’s estate to look for a treasure.

The only sore thumb is how long the explanation takes at the end of the book – and a bit of a tomato surprise in the reveal of one of the bad guys.

The Fix by David Baldacci

Third in the memory man series about Alex Decker, a man who was in one place in the NFL and suffered from the hit.  Now he has synesthesia, where he sees colors representing what he sees, the most prominent being blue for death, and hyperthymesia, a perfect memory, whether he wants to remember or not.\

In this case, as he is walking to work one day, a man kills a woman then himself in front of the Hoover building.  Decker's team is pulled off of cold cases and given this case to solve.  What it leads to is bigger than a simple murder.  The man was a contractor with a meeting in the Hoover building, the woman was a hospice volunteer and substitute teacher with no apparent connection to the man.

It's up to Decker and his team and friends to solve what turns out to be a much bigger case than anyone expects.

This is worth analyzing.

The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski

A series of intertwined short stories in which we meet The Witcher, Geralt of Rivia, who was tortured and raised to fight monsters in medieval Poland.  A big man with a pagan priestess and a troubadour named Dandelion.  Geralt slays monsters and frees others from their curse.  It is now a series on cable TV.

The Innocent by David Baldacci (2012) Grand Central Publishing

The first in a series of books about Will Robie, a hit man employed by the government.  It starts by showing us two of his hits; a gangster eliminated, along with his bodyguards, in Scotland, and an anti-western Saudi who is an embarrassment to his country.

Then Robie is given a hit in the U.S. which is not normal.  When he approaches the woman in her bedroom, he sees she is holding a child in her arms.  He decides not to kill her, but a back-up sniper puts a round through the child into her heart.  Robie snaps up the other child, in its car-seat and leaves it with a neighbor.  The second story line involves a girl in foster care who returns to her parents expecting to leave the D.C. area with them, but they are killed.

Robie and the girl get on the same bus out of town, along with a killer who wants to eliminate the girl.  Robie prevents the kill and they leave the bus, and it blows-up.

The problems become intertwined and Robie must solve who is trying to kill him and the girl.

Oddkins by Dean Koontz

This is disguised as a children’s tale about a magic toy maker's death and the quest of his magic toys to find the new toy maker who is across the town.  Their adversaries include some newly awakened toys made by the previous, evil, toy maker.  At the same time, the heir of the toy maker who thought his uncle was ridiculous and wants to sell the toy shop is pursued by a man who was just released from prison who wants to buy the shop to make more evil toys.  The turning point comes when the nephew sees the magic toys on their journey being pursued by the evil toys.