The dark secret of a double killing outside the FBI HQ

A gangland-style execution — and the murderer’s subsequent suicide — right outside the FBI headquarters in Washington is witnessed by an extraordiry agent who is now tasked to solve it. But, while he cannot find any links between the two, comes another agency which fears the case has more sinister overtones.

The executioner is no crimil, but rich businessman Walter Dabney, who has worked with the agency on several contracts and is a loving family man. So what made him kill An Berkshire outside the J. Edgar Hoover Building? And what is the connection between them, leave alone the motive? In his third appearance, Amos Decker, the man who can’t forget anything, is now taken off the cold case unit to investigate this “hot”, seemingly inexplicable crime which occurred before his eyes and he could not prevent.

While Decker suspects espioge, Defence Intelligence Agency agent Harper Brown enters the scene and tells Decker that they’ll take over as they apprehend the crime could conceal a major threat. “We could be looking at a 9/11-type attack,” as she puts it. Decker, however, is not the one to give up and with Brown also not making much headway, the two form a grudging partnership. Can this socially awkward loner, a seemingly alieted but brilliant agent, find the missing piece and foil the conspiracy — once he filly figures out what it is? During the course of the investigation, he also has to fight his own demons. Decker still carries the trauma of the brutal murder of his wife and daughter (in his debut “Memory Man”, 2015) and still can see the bodies clearly “as if it happened yesterday” — the curse of his perfect recall. Decker almost seems non-human if you discount a few instances with a little boy who is dying of cancer and others with his young colleague Alex Jamison, a reporter-turned-FBI agent — both of whom mage to arouse his more tender impulses. What actually keeps you hooked is its flawed but very relatable hero, who comes with a lot of baggage, like the rest of us. Decker has already fallen down and got back up in the previous novels and in this too, he overcomes his trauma to serve his country. (IANS)