Amos Decker Used to Punch Above His Weight
I bet you thought Memory Man, the first book in the Amos Decker series, was pretty great. Sure, beneath the surface it was just another run-of-the-mill crime novel—but it still stood out as something oddly gripping and refreshingly original, thanks to its 286-pound, grumpy, and socially awkward main character who remembers literally everything that has ever happened to him, down to the exact second. In The Last Mile, this oddball Amos Decker returns—a man who, on top of everything, had to avenge the murder of his own family. Now that was one hell of a start.
Especially if, like me, you once swore off David Baldacci for good, convinced he was a truly awful writer. And yet, Memory Man—I’ve got to admit—turned out to be weirdly irresistible.
Long story short: Amos caught the bastard who murdered his family—that nasty little piece of garbage—and ended up joining the FBI as an outside consultant. Just like Patrick Jane in the final season of The Mentalist.
Hey—Decker’s Starting to Lose His Mind!
So the FBI isn’t messing around: Amos’s team includes an FBI boss, another FBI agent, the journalist chick from the previous book, and a shrink. Feeling overwhelmed yet? Yeah, good thing they didn’t rope in Aunt Maggie from Building B just because she’s good at crossword puzzles.
The Last Mile team needs a separate bus when they head out to a crime scene. Do you think anyone gives these characters any depth? Hell no, the only one who stands out from the rest is the FBI agent, and that’s just because he’s constantly being a jerk to Amos. The others believe EVERYTHING he says. Without a word.
Do you think they’re doing the right thing? Hell no! Fatso Amos decides to go on a diet, which, okay, he could use it, I’m not saying, but he takes it way too far, the poor idiot. As a result, his body’s glycogen stores start to deplete, and that’s probably not great for his BRAIN. Of course, that’s just my guess—maybe it’s something else, but whatever it is, it’s definitely targeting his BRAIN. Maybe fatal brain cancer, or I don’t know what, but the point is, the guy’s clearly losing his mind.
For example, they kill the witness because of him. Oh, uh, sorry, says Amos, didn’t expect that to happen. Amos’s only luck is that everyone else in the group is just as clueless, and, as we all know, among the blind, the one-eyed man is king, so even with his brain on low power, he still manages to get ahead.
There’s No Plan This Complicated in the World
The culprit in The Last Mile comes up with the most complicated plan to disappear from his pursuers. A plan so complicated that it guarantees him decades of work. He gets innocent people locked up, who in the end he’ll have to free again. And he constantly has to take people out of the picture to make sure everything goes according to plan.
Meanwhile, Amos throws all reason out the window and charges ahead like a self-confidence-fueled bull in a china shop. All his plans fail, he keeps getting double-crossed and made a fool of, while he constantly puts others in mortal danger. And you, watching from the sidelines, keep hissing: ‘Amos, for fuck’s sake, no! Not this, seriously, old man!’
And you think that’s going to help him, now that YET ANOTHER PERSON joining their team? (Yeah, you heard right, now there are six of them investigating!) Fat chance. It just makes it worse. The real kicker is that if you’re naturally naive, impressionable, and gullible—just like the author of these lines—you’ll mostly see all the twists in The Last Mile coming. The book tries to deliver two big “OMG” reveals. I saw both of them coming from miles away, the second they were hinted at.
David Baldacci is Not One Single Man — he’s Many!
So then why the hell doesn’t Amos—this FATASS, DIMWITTED, LAME NUMBSKULL—see any of it coming?! You know why? It’s gotta be because David Baldacci pumps out two books every single year. There’s just no damn way you can publish two books a year and have them actually make sense. By now, Baldacci has probably—maybe in a slightly less shameless way—turned into a brand, just like James Patterson, where one name covers an entire team pumping out books in every genre imaginable. And guess what? Book two in the Amos Decker series was probably handed off to the dumbest, least talented intern in the whole damn team.
That’s the only explanation for the level of nonsense in The Last Mile. Like how Amos manages a major breakthrough in the case… using a simple Google search! Or how, brimming with the boldness of Major Jack Reacher himself (see: Lee Child’s Tripwire), he lays all his cards on the table (and it’s the worst possible hand, just saying), just to piss off some powerful enemies—then only afterward realizes, “Oh crap, they’re definitely going to kill me.” And what does our genius do next? Go on, guess. That’s right: the dumbass starts whining and waits around for someone to come save his sorry ass.
Final rating: 4.5/10
The Last Mile (Amos Decker #2) by David Baldacci
644 pages, Hardcover
Published in 2016 by Grand Central Publishing
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Red Queen by Juan Gómez-Jurado
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Chasing the Dead by Tim Weaver
Gods of War by James Lovegrove