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.