Memory

Pittsburgh, 1986: The city is gripped in a panic as a maniac slips poison onto pharmacy shelves. All of the evidence has pointed to Ron Corbett, but shoddy policework let Corbett off the hook, left the crime unsolved. Ten years later, it's happening again. This time, for the most personal of reasons, Detective Downing has made it his mission to see Corbett behind bars. He enlists the help of Jim Christensen, a psychologist who specializes in memory, to interview Corbett's son, now a young man with a painful past and problems of his own. Does the boy remember his father poisoning pill containers? Has he blocked memories of a horrific crime spree enacted in his own house? As Christensen explores the boy's memory and Downing grows more obsessive investigating the case, both men fear that the killings now may not be as random as they once thought and that unlocking memories may draw them too close to a vicious predator.

This chilling legal thriller that brings readers into the depths of human memory. For generations the Underhill family has dominated Pennsylvania politics. Now, with their youngest son locked in a tight gubernatorial race, a simple accident threatens to derail the entire campaign. Floss Underhill, the family's elderly matriarch, has been discovered alive after falling from a gazebo into a ravine, and Brenna Kennedy gets brought in as a defense attorney for the family. The police don't think her fall was an accident-and soon neither does Kennedy. Kennedy's partner, psychologist and memory expert Jim Christensen, has been studying Floss Underhill for months in a group of Alzheimer's patients. Her mind ravaged by the disease, her body broken by the fall, Floss Underhill nevertheless knows something, and is trying to tell Christensen a family secret so explosive it could bring down an empire. But to bring the truth out, Kennedy and Christensen will have to face some powerful enemies in this twisting mystery-thriller.

Eight years ago, Brenna Kennedy defended Carmen DellaVecchio. He was a loner, a freak, and accused of the brutal rape and near-murder of Pittsburgh cop Teresa Harnett. She lost the case and DellaVecchio was sent to prison. But now, DNA evidence has cast doubt on DellaVecchio's guilt, and he is freed while waiting for a new trial. Kennedy continues to believe he is an innocent man. But if DellaVecchio is not guilty, then a dangerous sociopath is still out there. Kennedy's boyfriend-the brilliant and compassionate psychologist Jim Christensen-has dedicated his career to studying the effects of memory loss, including victims of trauma. When Teresa Harnett asks him to help her remember the events of that terrible night, he reluctantly agrees-and soon all of them are caught in the web of a madman who will kill to stay free . . .