Synopses & Reviews
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? Amid rampant corruption and tightening city purse strings, whatever conclusion Brownlaw comes to, the city of San Diego -- and Brownlaw's life -- hangs in the balance. A carefully woven novel of suspense, The Fallen brings to life a superb cast of charactersagainst the all-too-real backdrop of a city fighting for its survival. Hailed by critics as a powerhouse writer (New York Times) and a thinking man's bestseller (Washington Post), T. Jefferson Parker delivers his most elegantly written, suspenseful, and moving novel yet.
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“Smart and thrilling...Parker has imagination to burn...Crisp and elegant sentences keep the pages turning.” Toronto Star
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“T. Jefferson Parker could well be the best crime writer working out of Southern California.” Chicago Tribune
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“Delivers on all levels, as a mystery and a study of the depths of cruelty to which people can sink.” Orlando Sentinel
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"Parker's best to date....Very highly recommended." Bookreporter.com
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“An entirely engrossing and unforgettable tale.” Rocky Mountain News
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“Deftly plotted, gracefully written .” Kirkus Reviews
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“(Parker) writes with intelligence, style and sensitivity, and he belongs…in the first rank of American crime novelists.” Washington Post
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“A wonderful story with compassionate characters, plenty of action, thoughtful deduction and a shocking rationale for murder.” Sunday Denver Post
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“A good story well told by a gifted writer at the top of his game.” San Diego Union-Tribune
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“Lively well-paced writing.…A cut above the average mystery fare.” Pittsburgh Tribune
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“Parkers best to date.…Very highly recommended.” Bookreporter.com
Synopsis
Promoted to homicide after surviving a push from a sixth-floor hotel room, Robbie Brownlaw, the youngest detective in the department, uses his new talent for synesthesia--seeing colorful shapes tied to emotions when someone speaks--to investigate the death of Garrett Asplundh, a fellow San Diego cop charged with monitoring the integrity of city officials. Reprint.
Synopsis
A good cop, Robbie Brownlaw was thrown from a sixth-floor window of a downtown hotel and miraculously survived. The traumatic incident left Robbie with a fast-track career in the San Diego P.D.'s Homicide division . . . and a rare neurological condition that enables him to see people's emotional words as colored shapes—green trapezoids of envy, red squares of deception . . .
Another good man lies dead in a blood-splattered Ford Explorer—an ex-cop-turned-ethics investigator whose private life was torn open by unthinkable tragedy. Whether Garrett Asplundh's death was suicide or murder isn't immediately apparent—but it's soon clear to Robbie and his smart, tough partner, McKenzie Cortez, that Garrett had hard evidence of sex, scandal, and corruption spreading deep into local government. But pursuing the truth could prove more emotionally devastating than Robbie ever imagined.
About the Author
T. Jefferson Parker is the bestselling author of seventeen novels, including the Edgar® Award winners California Girl and Silent Joe. Alongside Dick Francis and James Lee Burke, he is one of only three writers who has won the Edgar® Award for Best Novel more than once. Parker lives with his family in Southern California.