The Last Mile is the second book in the Memory Man series. We return to the world of Amos Decker, former cop and investigator, who has taken a position working on an FBI special task force. Even though it’s the second book in the series, this book can be read as a standalone. The book does go into a little bit of detail about what happened in the first book but all you need to know is that due to a head injury sustained playing professional football, Amos Decker can remember every single detail of every single day and is a little bit socially awkward.
The Last Mile is about a prisoner, Melvin Mars, who is scheduled to be executed after being found guilty of murdering his parents. However, hours before his execution, another man confesses to the crime. Decker takes an interest in the case due to the similarities to his own life – both Amos and Melvin were talented football players whose families were murdered and another suspect confessed to the crime years later. Amos is intrigued – why has this man confessed to the crime and is he telling the truth? The questions and answers lead Amos and his team on a wild ride where the truth may be more horrible than anyone imagined.
This book was another book club read. We read the first book last year (read my review here) and everyone liked it so much that the next book made our list to read.
I really enjoyed this book and read it in 2 days. I had a hard time putting it down because I wanted to find out what happened. It’s a great mystery and thriller and there were so many twists that the ending was nothing like I imagined.
The character of Amos Decker is so unique. He has perfect recall so at times you think he’s going to solve the whole mystery by himself. I really enjoyed the teamwork between him and the other members of the team. It made Decker so much more real when he would mess up. We saw that he wasn’t perfect and didn’t have all the answers.
Although he is socially awkward I still found him to be a likable character.
There are plenty of secondary characters as we meet Amos’s team. At times it was a little difficult to keep track of who everyone was but I think that was more because the secondary characters didn’t get a lot of character development. The book is mainly about Amos Decker and Melvin Mars. At times it seemed like the Amos and Melvin show.
I had a lot of thoughts about who the real killer was and what really happened and this book kept me guessing which I really liked.
I don’t know if my book club is going to read the next book in the series but I think I will, just to find out what is next in store for Amos Decker.
Leave a Reply