Parallel Recollections (Parallel Recollections - The Series Book 1)
About
A dead assassin. A young woman with memories that aren’t hers. And a detective who discovers that some crimes begin long before anyone dies.
Five-year-old Malory Carter witnesses something she was never meant to see.
A man falls from a London rooftop.
The police call it an operation gone wrong. Her parents call it a traumatic accident. Malory remembers it differently.
Years later, Detective Superintendent James Harlan is investigating a series of disturbing crimes. At first, the cases appear unrelated. Different victims. Different circumstances. No obvious connection.
Then a name from the past resurfaces.
Malory Carter.
What begins as a routine investigation soon becomes something far more unsettling. Malory knows things she should not know. She remembers places she has never visited. And buried somewhere in her recollections are fragments of a life that does not belong to her.
Harlan has spent thirty-six years investigating murder. He understands evidence, motive and human behaviour.
But this case refuses to follow the rules.
As he digs deeper, he discovers a trail leading through old secrets, hidden identities and a shadowy figure who appears to have been influencing events for years.
Someone has been moving people like pieces on a chessboard.
Someone has been waiting.
And Malory may be the one person who can see the pattern.
But seeing the pattern does not mean understanding it.
And understanding it may come at a price.
Parallel Recollections is a psychological thriller about memory, identity, justice and the unsettling possibility that the past is never quite as dead as we believe.
Told through multiple perspectives and fragmented recollections, the story slowly reveals its secrets while challenging the reader to decide what is real, what is remembered, and who can be trusted.
Some memories are not meant to be remembered.
Some crimes begin long before the crime itself.
Praise for this book
A child witness to a terrible incident, a freak event connects two people and the search to stop a vigilante killer. Offered to us in multiple perspectives Parallel Recollections is an apt name for this story that shows a central thread of events through multiple characters’ eyes. A police attempt to stop a killer ends with the body crashing to the ground in front of a mother and young child. Debris from the impact lodges in the young child, giving her access to some of the memories and knowledge of the deceased - a contract killer focusing on those that do harm to children.
This is a psychological thriller with a unique twist. The way that Varga “lives on” after his death in the opening pages adds an interesting dimension to the story, and I like the way it is explored within the story as a medical element as opposed to a rogue supernatural event in a thriller otherwise grounded in realism. The multiple perspectives allows us to get a broader picture while also highlighting the idiosyncrasies and motivations of each of the characters, seeing what they deem important. I found this a great way of bringing the characters to life without relying on basic description. A shorter read, this is an action packed thriller with twists that can be read in one sitting.