February 23, 2015
At the start of Marshall’s pedestrian second novel featuring FBI special agent Jenna Ramey (after 2014’s Color Blind), Molly Keegan, a precocious six-year-old, calls 911 during a shooting at a Virginia grocery store that leaves seven dead. Jenna’s boyfriend, Yancy Vogul, happens to be the 911 operator who takes the call. Yancy alerts Jenna, who’s joined the police team en route to the crime scene, to find Molly. Jenna’s grapheme-color synesthesia allows her to associate colors with people, numbers, and emotions—a kind of color-coded guide to the truth. Molly has a similarly rare talent with numbers and number associations. Clues at the grocery store suggest that the murders are the work of a mass killer known as the Triple Shooter. Molly and Jenna join forces to use their special abilities to identify the killer. The business about color and number associations will please paranormal fans, but the creaky plot disappoints. Agent: Rachel Eckstrom, Irene Goodman Literary Agency.