The Memory Collector by Meg Gardiner

The Memory Collector by Meg Gardiner

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 headshrinker: 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 anteretrograde amnesia, and can't form new memories. As his thoughts drift away like tendrils of smoke, Jo finds herself racing to save a patient who can walk and talk yet can't help her 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, missing people, 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.

Meg Gardiner is the critically acclaimed author of the UNSUB series and China Lake, which won the Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original and was a finalist for NPR's 100 Best Thrillers Ever. Stephen King has said of Meg Gardiner: This woman is as good as Michael Connelly...her novels are, simply put, the finest crime-suspense series I've come across in the last twenty years. Gardiner was also recently reelected President of the Mystery Writers of America for 2019 and 2020.

The Dark Corners of the Night is the third novel in her Barry Award-winning UNSUB series, which received three starred reviews from the major trade publications and is soon to be a major television series.