Nadine (23dollars) - reviewed on 4/13/2016 + 432 more book reviews

MEMORY MAN was picked as the April 2016 pick in my online book club, The Reading Cove. Unfortunately, all I can say is this story was a convoluted, plodding mess.

No, actually, that's not all...

It opens with the gruesome murders of three people, yet somehow there's no emotional connection to any of it. The narrative is also mind-numbingly repetitive, telling you over and over and over again 1) how fat and bulky Amos Decker is, and 2) how much like a DVR his perfect memory is. Seriously. Ad nauseam. (Drinking game for the number of times 'DVR' is printed in this book!)

The resolution, when you finally find out who the killer is, is not only far-fetched and implausible, but utterly laughable and just insults the intelligence of anyone beyond a high school or average level of intelligence (which unfortunately excludes much of the commercial audience :-(.

I didn't enjoy anything about this story. For a police procedural/mystery, it's so poorly constructed that you can essentially read the first chapter, then jump to the last and save yourself a lot of wasted time. The commercial audience is generally impressed with a household name author's clever ideas alone vs. a clever execution of those ideas, and so despite its commercial raves, we can see that MEMORY MAN is definitely not a 'thinking person's' story.

I really hate to say it, but I have to give MEMORY MAN a D. It's definitely not memorable and unless you're one who plans on continuing the series you probably won't remember it in 2.5 seconds...yeah, already forgot. :)

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