Bennett Davlin, Memory

Memory

Bennett Davlin

Berkley, Jan 2007, $14.00

ISBN: 0425207056

Near Manaus, Brazil, Harvard graduate student William Terrel spends time with the dangerous Yanomano tribe when he stupidly steals a powder the natives use in rituals. Nearly dead, he is brought to St. Augustine's Hospital in Manaus where Dr. Costas performs an MRI whose results stun the physician.

In New England, medical researcher Dr. Taylor Briggs seeks a cure to Alzheimer's that is killing his once brilliant mother and he fears will one day kill him. When he sees an email of Terrel's MRI, Taylor decides immediately to visit the ailing man, whose brain's activities make no sense.

In Brazil, Taylor learns that Terrel died and was cremated, but Dr. Costas, assuming he is from the American consul, gives him the deceased's backpack. Inside Taylor finds a strange powder as he brews tea. He soon "hallucinates" about his father's car. Not long after that in New England he sees a painting by S. Jacobs of a man wearing a coat that reminds him of his dad. After meeting the artist Steph, he has memories of girls being killed that are not his; he believes the powder has enabled him to "recall" the memories of a serial killer genetically linked to him.

This exciting thriller will grip readers from the first memory that Taylor envisions when he loses his shoe in the muddy bank of a river while still in his Manaus hotel room. The storyline is loaded with twists of memories that can become difficult to follow for the reader and the hero who finds red herrings, death, and love; the latter is a fascinating concept as Taylor ponders if he is in love or is he feeling someone else's memory. Suspense fans will enjoy Bennett Davlin's tense thriller that focuses on what is a real memory (I have seen the movie so cannot comment on it).

Harriet Klausner