Finished: The Last Mile (Baldacci) The second book in the Amos Decker series, and another pretty good page-turner. In the first book about Amos Decker, Memory Man, we found out that Decker was an ex cop whose family had been brutally murdered. There were times when he himself was the suspect, but with the help of his perfect memory, and new friends, reporter Alex Jamison and FBI agent, Ross Bogart, Decker uncovered the true killer. Decker is a unique person, as he has suffered from both synesthesia (seeing numbers, etc. in colors) and hyperthymesia (he remembers every detail of every thing that he ever sees) ever since being hit with an extremely hard tackle in his one and only professional football game years ago. In the second book, Decker has accepted a job with Ross Bogart's new FBI special task force working on cold cases. Alex Jamison, the feisty female reporter has also been asked to join the task force. The case that captures Decker's attention is that of Melvin Mars, a man who has been on death row in Texas for killing his parents for the past twenty years. It is the day of Melvin's execution when, at the last minute, another death row inmate in another prison confesses to the crime! Melvin is pardoned and released, but until the authorities are convinced that the other inmate is telling the truth, he risks a chance of going back to prison. So, Melvin ends up working closely with Decker and company to figure out why the other inmate confessed, and eventually that he's not telling the truth. Once they figure that out, then Melvin is truly in danger of going back to prison, so a race ensues to find out why the other inmate lied and WHY there is someone out there who wants Melvin out of prison so badly. A story with lots of twists and turns is uncovered, including Melvin's father not really being dead after all (but his mother still is), and his father not even really being his father, but a hit man. At the time of their deaths, his mother and father had escaped some bad people and laid low. However, when Melvin was graduating from college as a star running back slated to go in the first five picks of the draft, then ESPN had done a story about him, and his parents' faces had been shown on television. The story goes so far as to be about Melvin's father and some of his close friends being responsible for a couple of bombings of black churches in the 1960's resulting in several deaths, including children. Melvin's father had been a racist, but after the bombings, had fallen in love with a beautiful black woman, Melvin's mother. He had stolen the evidence that the other friends had arrogantly kept of the bombings and kept it in a safety deposit box. All these years later, Melvin's faux father comes forward to Decker when he realizes that the bad guys will now come after Melvin, thinking he might know where the evidence is. He's still a nasty piece of work, but he does end up giving his life for Decker and Melvin in the end...as well as killing the old friends of his, one now a powerful congressman, and one a billionaire business man, responsible for all the trouble to begin with. In the process of the story, Decker and Melvin, two people with practically no one close to them in their lives, become friends! I hope that Melvin shows up in the next Amos Decker book. :-)