My life was ordinary until three years ago when I was thrown out of a downtown hotel window. My name is Robbie Brownlaw, and I am a homicide detective for the city of San Diego. I am twenty-nine years old.
I now have synesthesia, a neurological condition where your senses get mixed up. Sometimes when people talk to me, I see their voices as colored shapes provoked by the emotions of the speakers, not by the words themselves. I have what amounts to a primitive lie detector. After three years, I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to the colors and shapes of other people’s feelings, unless they don’t match up with their words.
When Garrett Asplundh’s body is found under a San Diego bridge, Robbie Brownlaw and his partner, McKenzie Cortez, are called on to the case. After the tragic death of his child and the dissolution of his marriage, Garrett—regarded as an honest, straight-arrow officer—left the SDPD to become an ethics investigator, looking into the activities of his former colleagues. At first his death, which takes place on the eve of a reconciliation with his ex, looks like suicide, but the clues Brownlaw and Cortez find just don’t add up. With pressure mounting from the police and the city’s politicians, Brownlaw fights to find the truth, all the while trying to hold on to his own crumbling marriage. Was Garrett’s death an “execution” or a crime of passion, a personal vendetta or the final step in an elaborate cover-up?
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"Normally, I don't read traditional crime fiction, but I picked up T. Jefferson Parker's The Fallen at my local library book sale and I loved it! The main character, Robbie Brownlaw, is a cop with a unique ability; he's a synesthesist. He sees colored shapes while people are speaking, allowing him to tell if they are lying or not. This is a result of a nasty fall he took while trying to save someone from a burning building. The strain of his recovery and his new gift has worn thin for his longtime girlfriend, Gina, who leaves him. While coping with the loss of the love of his life he sets out to solve the murder of a local cop turned Ethics officer for the city, who many didn't like because of his dedication to justice. It looks like Garret committed suicide, but did he really. Read and find out. This plot has a few twists and turns to keep you interested. It's not fluffy and Parker's main character has a great tone to him."
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Nora (4 out of 5 stars)