The Junction Chronicles is a trilogy of Canadian speculative thrillers by David Rotenberg, whose protagonist, acting coach Decker Roberts, a synaesthete with a special talent for determining the truth in statements, lives in the neighbourhood of The Junction in Toronto, supplementing his income with his unique talent and becoming involved with American intelligence agents after his life begins to fall apart. The series was first published by Simon & Schuster between 2012 and 2014.
Synopsis
The Placebo Effect
In a prologue set in 1988, Decker Roberts, aged 22, stands in Chartres Cathedral, where he meets a monk who asks whether he has decided to stay. Brother Malcolm offers to teach him everything he knows and in return, the cathedral and ministry will become his home, and he will avoid "the room with no windows – and the hanging man".
The young Roberts knew then, as the older Roberts knows now, that the monk spoke the truth, as he always knows when anyone speaks the truth, a unique benefit of his particular form of synaesthesia, a neurological condition. For years, this talent has proven to be a lucrative sideline to his regular work as a theatre director and acting coach based in The Junction, Toronto. Roberts is hired by companies because he can tell them if their potential recruits are lying. He leads a successful double life, carefully compartmentalized with a myriad of alter egos. His inner life, however, is one of sorrow, having lost his wife to ALS and missing his estranged son, Seth. He is also disturbed by the excessive number of churches in the area. He believes they are there to prevent an evil from re-appearing. He senses its existence when he walks the streets and feels the Junction "hunch around him in the cold."
When homeless synaesthete Michael Shedloski arrives in the Junction, he has a vision of a boy dangling from a lamp post across from the public library on Annette Street, grasping a rope at his neck, trying in vain to get his last breath. The event is real, but took place a century earlier. Hearing of this, Roberts knows that the hanged boy is a "marker" – that there must be a portal in the Junction. Then he realizes that its name does not really refer to a railroad depot as most of its residents believe, but rather to a point of connection, a connection between this world and another, and the hanged boy marks the access.
Henry-Clay Yolles, the CEO of a pharmaceutical company, exploits Sedloski's unique talent for determining perfect ratios, allowing the company to know how many placebo pills can be included in a prescription as a cost saving measure without affecting the drug's efficaciousness. Yolles Pharmaceuticals is now interested in Roberts. A resentful Shedloski publicly protests his dismissal by Yolles and tries to warn Roberts, but is killed. Yolles now needs to eliminate Roberts because he might discover the truth about its new product.
Meanwhile, in Washington D.C., the National Security Agency is also interested in Roberts as a means of evaluating statements by terrorists. Yslan Hicks, who studies synasethetes, has been observing him. The NSA becomes more involved as it perceives its potential asset is threatened.
Narrowly escaping death when his house burns down, it does not occur to Roberts that it was no accident. Next, his finances are crippled, and his studio condemned. He realizes that he must have heard something in one of his sessions that he should not have, and goes on the run trying to work out why he has been targeted and by whom.
His escape route takes him from coast to coast, north to south, through small towns and big cities across North America, as both pursuer and pursued. As Roberts draws closer to his quarry, he grudgingly agrees to work with and for the NSA. Agent Yslan Hicks tells him his friend Crazy Eddie betrayed him, but he refuses to believe it.
A Murder of Crows
Fourteen months have passed since the incident with Yolles Pharmaceuticals. Roberts has spent some time applying his talent in Las Vegas, simultaneously seeking information about Seth, who is suffering from am aggressive form of cancer of the bladder. Crazy Eddie is still trying to win back his daughter, and to do so he intends to incriminate Ira Charendoff, the lawyer to whom he betrayed Roberts over a year earlier. In order to clear the playing field and keep the NSA off his best friend's back at the same time, Eddie sends Roberts to South Africa. A close eye is being kept on both men and others like them by the NSA with a view to using them for combating terrorism.