The Fix

Amos Decker, the man who forgets nothing, works for 11 hours to solve the mystery of a shooting / suicide in front of the FBI building. The reveals are excruciatingly long and many. This book could easily be half the length and be more entertaining. Repetitiousness almost caused me to quit listening. Characters are uninteresting and numerous. Tell me again why I read this? ( )

You have to like Amos Decker even though his behaviour is boorish at times to say the least. His abilities, however, make for fascinating reading. His near perfect recall means that very little escapes his attention, but his withdrawing within himself must be so frustrating, particularly Alex Jamison who works so hard to understand him, and who clearly cares for him, something to which he continues to remain oblivious. His other working partners, Milligan and Bogart, also struggle to keep up with him, but readily appreciate his deductive qualities.
An attractive agent comes on the scene, playing a very important part in the development of the plot, as does Melvin Mars, the subject of the previous book in the series. Amos’ intriguing way of posing questions that others may not have considered is what leads them through a plot which, with 20/20 hindsight is quite obvious, but which the author veils behind the difficulties that they all find in pursuing Amos’ theories.
It all makes for very good reading – excellently paced with an intriguing plot that also has some quite heart-tugging moments to it. ( )

I somehow skipped reading book 2 of the Amos Decker series and ended up reading book 3 before book 2. I wondered since I didn't remember the Melvin Mars character from book 1.

I did not like this book as much as I liked book 1, "The Memory Man". I don't know why. Maybe because in some ways Amos seems more alone or lost in this book than he did in the first one. Maybe because the plot comes to us in such disjointed ways. (I do think that is probably more typical of how an investigation really goes (in real life), just got a bit hard to follow at times.) ( )

The Fix is the 3rd book in David Baldacci’s Amos Decker series. Amos was on his way to being a football star when an accident on the field gave him a brain injury. While it did change his personality, it also left him with an ability many see as a gift, while he sometimes sees as a curse. He has perfect recall, he remembers everything. It is very helpful for his job, which currently is with the FBI.

Amos has a partner Jamison, who used to be a journalist. She tends to keep tabs on him and smooths things over with the people they interact with, since Amos is a rather abrupt individual and will sometimes just end a conversation and leave. She has just got a 2nd ‘job’ as a building super for a friend of theirs. It comes with it’s own set of problems.

Amos is walking to a meeting at the Hoover building when directly in front of him, a man just pulls out a semi-automatic and blows the brains out of a woman in front of him. Then looks Amos in the eye and does the same to himself. No notes, no explanation, and no obvious connection to his victim.

Amos and Jamison were hired to work cold cases, his meeting he was late to was to inform him they were being reassigned to active cases, and even though he was a witness, they gave him the murder suicide as a first one. It turns out that the DIA had been watching the man, and had proof that he had sold government secrets, and some very important ones at that.

The duo have their work cut out for them and it is a rather twisted scheme that plays out. Lots of secrets keep being unearthed, and most seem to dirty the water even more. It was about half way through the book that I figured out who was the ‘important’ person, though there were still plenty of other issues to untangle, it did surprise me that it took so much longer for the Amos and crew to eve start to suspect the individual. All were a little too focused on their preconceived ideas. Which of course is a very human thing to do. ( )

Title: The Fix (Amos Decker Series #3)
Author: David Baldacci
Pages: 421
Year: 2017
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
My rating is 4 out of 5 stars.
Amos Decker is walking in front of the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. on his way to work when the guy in front of him pulls out a pistol, shoots a lady walking close by him, then turns the gun on himself, committing suicide. Amos is an eyewitness and his team gets the case to solve. The male victim works as a contractor for various agencies including the FBI, NSA and CIA. The female victim is a substitute teacher at a Catholic school and volunteers at a hospice center.
Amos has also been upgraded to landlord of an up and coming neighborhood building remodel. He and his friend Alex Jamison will be co-landlords and live in the building. It is not in a good neighborhood right now, but hopefully that is going to change. While working on the case, he must also deal with some local gangbangers who are harassing a tenant in the building. As the two victims have their backgrounds investigated, the team uncovers far more than they could have imagined and the military branch of the DIA gets involved with their own investigator, who reluctantly agrees to work with Amos and his team. As the team digs for clues, more and more danger from unknown enemies attempts to take Amos and his fellow investigators out of the picture for good.
This is a great story with lots of intrigue, danger and mystery. I really like the character of Amos Decker. He speaks his mind, sometimes to his detriment. I like watching him solve mysteries and the questions he asks to get his brain the information it needs to process. He is always ruminating on the various words people say, how they say it and what are the variations in meaning in what they say. He goes over and over what has been said until something clicks and sends him down a path that hopefully will solve the case. I would have given this book five stars, but there was a lot more cursing (including the f-bomb) in this story that I didn’t notice in the other two books in this series and for that reason I downgraded my rating. ( )