Jo Beckett #2
Dutton Adult
June 2009
On Sale: June 11, 2009
Featuring: Jo Beckett
368 pages ISBN: 0525950753 EAN: 9780525950752 Hardcover Add to Wish List
The second pulse-pounding thriller in Meg Gardiner’s Jo
Beckett series, whose “thrilling,” “crackerjack,”
“adrenaline-filled” debut was an Independent Mystery
Booksellers Association bestseller.
Forensic psychiatrist Jo Beckett’s specialty is the
psychological autopsy— an investigation into a person’s life
to determine whether a death was natural, accidental,
suicide, or homicide. She calls herself a deadshrinker
instead of a head-shrinker: The silence of her “patients” is
a key part of the job’s attraction. When Jo is asked to do a
psychological autopsy on a living person—one with a suspect
memory who can’t be trusted to participate in his own
medical care—she knows all her skills will be put to the test.
Jo is called to the scene of an aircraft inbound from London
to help deal with a passenger who is behaving erratically.
She figures out that he’s got anterograde amnesia, and can’t
form new memories.
Jo finds herself racing to save a patient who can walk and
talk and yet can’t help Jo figure out just what happened to
him. For every cryptic clue he is able to drag up from his
memory, Jo has to sift through a dozen nonsensical
statements. Suddenly a string of clues arises, something to
do with a superdeadly biological agent code-named “Slick,” a
missing wife and son, and a secret partnership gone horribly
wrong. Jo realizes her patient’s addled mind may hold the
key to preventing something terrible from happening in her
beloved San Francisco. In order to prevent it, she will have
to get deeper into the life of a patient than she ever has
before, hoping the truth emerges from the fog of his mind in
time to save her city—and herself.