The novel “Flashback” by Dan Simmons was published for the first time in 2011.

Nick Bottom is a former Denver cop who’s become addicted to flashback, a drug that allows him to relive his memories as if they were real, to keep alive the presence of his wife Dara, who died a few years earlier in a car accident. For this reason, his teenage son Val went to live in Los Angeles with his maternal grandfather Leonard Fox.

Despite his problems, Nick Bottom is still considered a good detective and the Japanese billionaire Hiroshi Nakamura hires him to solve the case of his son’s murder, which happened six years earlier and remained unsolved. Information that were kept secret by Nakamura at the time gave Nick a new trace which, however, has very personal implications.