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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Feb 2006, 336 pages
Paperback:
Jan 2007, 400 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
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Following an accident, homicide detective Robbie Brownlaw, develops synesthesia, a neurological condition where your senses get mixed up. Sometimes when people talk to him, he see their voices as colored shapes provoked by the emotions of the speakers, not by the words themselves. When a sergeant in the Professional Standards Unit is found dead, will need all his talents, normal and paranormal, to solve the murder.
"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 characters against 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.
PROLOGUE
When the sixth floor of Las
Palmas Hotel caught fire Robbie Brownlaw was in the diner across the street
about to have lunch.
It was a cool March afternoon in San Diego and Brownlaw's
turkey burger had just arrived when he saw orange flames roiling behind the
hotel windows. He took a bite of the sandwich and hustled outside just as the
sixth story windows blew and an orange explosion knocked him back against the
brick wall of the diner.
Robbie heard screams up there in the fire. He had never heard
screams like these. Then he heard all the yelling as people spilled from the
restaurants and offices, pointing up at Las Palmas while debris clattered to the
asphalt—a splintered chair, a flaming lamp shade, a nightstand with the
drawers hanging out.
Fire alarms shrieked competing warnings down the street.
Brownlaw heard a guy screaming up on the sixth floor right through the ringing.
Such fear. He looked up, still braced against the wall of the ...
The week in which I read The Fallen I started three thrillers, but The Fallen was the only one that I finished. I felt like Goldilocks - one thriller was too macho, another was too gory - only The Fallen was just right, combining well drawn characters with a solidly told police procedural...continued
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(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
The protagonist in Parker's 13th novel has synesthesia, a condition that is believed to effect about 1 in every 200 people with a bias towards left-handed women.
Synesthesia comes from the two Greek words syn (together) and aisthesis (perception) - therefore synesthesia literally means "joined perception".
A synesthete experiences one sense with another. For example, on hearing a particular piece of music he/she might taste a particular flavor.
The most common form of synesthesia appears to be when someone sees a letter, number or word as a particular color - for example a synesthete might see the word car as sky blue and the number 5 as light green. Almost any combination of the senses is possible - there are synesthetes who ...
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