The Memory Collector: A Novel (Jo Beckett Series) [Abridged, Audiobook, CD] [Audio CD]

Meg Gardiner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 28, 2010 | Series: Jo Beckett Series (Book 2)

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Near the start of Edgar-finalist Gardiner's solid follow-up to The Dirty Secrets Club, San Francisco forensic psychiatrist Jo Beckett examines Ian Kanan, a distressed airline passenger who turns out to be suffering from anterograde amnesia, which makes it impossible for him to form new memories. Kanan, who's sure that his family has been kidnapped and he's been poisoned, disappears from the hospital before Beckett can learn more. When she starts digging into his background, Beckett discovers not only that Kanan was a security consultant for Chira-Sayf, a nanotechnology company, but that he may have been exposed to Slick, an experimental bioweapon. Along with her SFPD contact, Lt. Amy Tang, and para-jumper boyfriend, Gabe Quintana, Beckett races to find Kanan before the people he's pursuing unleash Slick on San Francisco. Gardiner more than compensates for the sometimes implausible plot with her effective use of Kanan's amnesia and her heroine's resourcefulness. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Pursuit of a sinister drug that short-circuits short-term memory drives Gardiner’s second taut thriller starring San Francisco forensic psychiatrist Jo Beckett (after The Dirty Secrets Club, in 2008). The doctor, who is accustomed to conducting investigations on the dead, has a live one this time: an airline passenger named Ian Kanan who became unhinged during a seemingly routine landing at San Francisco Airport. (He thrust open the emergency doors in a panic before two fellow passengers wrestled him away.) Turns out Kanan, an ex–Special Forces agent now working as a consultant, was sent to South Africa to intercept a rogue employee bent on stealing a cutting-edge drug called Slick. Designed as a “bomb-killer,” Slick’s untamed technology does more damage than good, prompting further explosions and rewiring the brains of those who come in contact with it. At some point, Kanan’s brain became infected; it now resets every five minutes, leaving him incapable of forming new memories. It’s up to Dr. Beckett to piece together Kanan’s past before Slick slithers its way into her beloved city. Bad guys, betrayal, and a beastly technology propel Edgar finalist Gardiner’s heart-stopping plot. Mystery fans are sure to embrace this whip-smart novelist, who gets better with every book. --Allison Block --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio on CD Value Priced (May 28, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1423361687
• ISBN-13: 978-1423361688
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 5 x 1.4 inches
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Meg Gardiner writes thrillers set in California. The Evan Delaney novels, featuring a Santa Barbara freelance journalist, include 2009 Edgar Award winner China Lake. The Jo Beckett series features a San Francisco forensic psychiatrist. The Dirty Secrets Club won the RT Reviewers' Choice Award for Best Procedural Novel of 2008 and was chosen one of the year's Top Ten Mysteries and Thrillers by Amazon.com. Originally from Oklahoma, Gardiner practiced law in Los Angeles and taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She lives near London.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining plot driven thriller, June 15, 2009

By 

barry (Boston, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Memory Collector (Jo Beckett) (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

You are either going to love this novel or not like it at all. Meg Gardiner writes in a style that is very fast paced, based on an exciting premise and provides a thrill ride type journey. If being on the edge of your seat due to the action of a novel is enough for you then you will love this book THE MEMORY COLLECTOR.

Sadly, if you like your thrillers to contain deep psychological profiles of the characters then this book will not be for you. From main character forensic psychiatrist Jo Becket to the other major characters and the minor ones as well we only get to know them a little bit. They all have a purpose and a standard background but there is very little depth to them. They are needed to carry the story and that they do very well.

Actually this novel is what one would call a perfect BEACH READ. It is an exciting page turner that demands not much concentration from the reader. The author does leave you guessing and the ending is satisfying but I can't help but wonder what Meg Gardiner would come up with if she concentrated on psychological development of her characters. She handles the plot aspect skillfully. If she could add the same quality to the characters she would raise her standards to another level. But I do recommend this novel if a plot driven book is what you are looking for.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Would someone please bring back the old Meg Gardiner???, July 13, 2009

By 

S. McGee (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Memory Collector (Jo Beckett) (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

Meg Gardiner is the author of an excellent mystery/thriller series featuring Evan Delaney, an attorney in Santa Barbara. They feature compelling, nuanced, true-to-life characters and fascinating plots with lots of suspense. She's also written, prior to this book, one so-so work featuring her new fictional creation, Jo (Johanna) Beckett. The premise of Jo's career -- she does forensic psychological examinations, exploring how and why people end up dead and commit crimes -- is quirkily intriguing. But in both the first book in the series and more acutely in this one, what could be a wonderful basis for a series of psychological suspense thrillers, becomes instead a device that enables Gardiner to write a much more mindless action thriller novel. Having read her earlier novels, she could have written a livelier, more thriller-like PD James-style novel; instead, she seems to have decided to move in the direction of James Patterson. And with Patterson and his team of co-writers turning out a new novel every six weeks or so, we don't really need that many James Pattersons...

As the synopsis discloses, this time around Beckett is roped into evaluating Ian Kanan, a security consultant who has been mysteriously contaminated with something that means he'll never be able to form new memories. The plot revolves around the nature of that mysterious stuff, and the race by Kanan to save his wife and son and the other race, by Beckett and her boyfriend (a parajumper/theology student??) Gabriel Quintana to find the bioweapon that has destroyed Kanan's life.

A good thriller should be like riding a rollercoaster -- the ride is so good that you're relishing every second of it. The other hallmark of a good suspense story is that when elements of implausibility are injected into the book to keep the adrenaline pumping and the reader frantically turning pages, these are never overwhelming. Gardiner tiptoes close to the edge on violating rule #1, and goes way over when it comes to #2; much of plot defies credulity. A great thriller artist was Hitchcock, who loved to place ordinary people in extraordinary situations. The key to his success was knowing exactly how many improbable or extraordinary things his viewer was prepared to accept on faith, and in what circumstances. It's a lesson Gardiner needs to learn, as she delivers one extraordinary scenario after another. This problem, already evident in the first book in this new series, becomes far more acute in its successor, where character takes a definite back seat to whiplash plot devices.

It took me three efforts to read this book completely, and I finished it only because I kept hoping for the signs of the old Meg Gardiner. With the exception of her skill in drawing the personality of Jo Beckett, they just aren't there. If you want a good California thriller, go back to Gardiner's earlier books (such as China Lake: An Evan Delaney Novel (Evan Delaney Mysteries), Jericho Point: An Evan Delaney Novel or Mission Canyon: An Evan Delaney Novel (Evan Delaney Mysteries)). Or if you're looking to buy an extraordinarily good thriller, the second volume in Stieg Larsson's trilogy is now available. Both The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Vintage) and The Girl Who Played with Fire offer extreme characters and situations, but they do it so well and so effortlessly that the result is a pulse-pounding, irresistible thriller of the kind that Gardiner seems to have walked away from delivering.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Below Average Thriller, May 22, 2011

By 

Clarice - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Memory Collector (Jo Beckett) (Hardcover)

I have read enough thrillers to understand that expecting good, detailed characterization is setting myself up for disappointment. So when I pick up a thriller, I look for an exciting plot, good twists and turns, and a likeable enough hero or heroine.

Sadly, this book falls flat on most of those criteria. I liked the idea of a forensic psychologist as protagonist - I thought it would be fun to see such a professional at work. But Jo Beckett doesn't do much by way of forensic psychology in this book; instead she gets involved in a race-against-time to save the world from a sinister corporation and a deadly chemical composition called Slick (if you've read Vonnegut and remember Ice-Nine, think of Slick as Ice-Nine-esque). OK, not very believable, but I can suspend disbelief - but what I couldn't get past was the lack of originality of the whole thing, since anterograde amnesia was the subject of a quite good film from a number of years ago, MEMENTO, and this whole book felt like a ripoff of that concept.

I also had a problem in this book that I rarely have. The posse of bad guys is a bit like the Three Stooges; I couldn't ever seem to remember their names or who was who. And the female villain is really a cartoon - a feminist nightmare who's willing to wreck anything and everything to catch the man she can't have. Come on, Ms. Gardiner, let's have our women evolved to a certain extent instead of playing out those "Jersey Shore" stereotypes of women who'll do anything to get their man.

I finished it but think I'll quickly forget most of it, probably because I felt it didn't offer me any reason to go back (or recommend). My biggest disappointment was feeling that the excitement with which I began the book was quickly sucked out of the reading experience. Since I hate to offer negative reviews without commenting on some of the positives, I can honestly say that the book's a quick read and that the hero/heroine are likable enough, and there's one good twist midway through.

If you need a beach read this summer, I sure this one will do just fine.