Not content with this concept he expands it to “synchronicity” which by definition is “the simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related but have no discernible connection.”

The author constructs his entire plot to embrace this concept and accomplishes it by slipping in and out of the main characters minds. He does this by labeling the chapters George, Sara, or Larry. One should be aware that author Ambrose is constantly playing with the reader’s mind in this jumping around.

Sara, the wealthy wife is having an affair with her first love Steve. By coincidence, George discovers this the weekend after his father was buried. Also, while going through the last of his father’s personal effects he finds a strange photograph. The picture depicts him at about age 10 standing on a movie set between a couple he does not recognize. George hires a detective and gradually it is revealed that he had a twin who was given away at birth to a pair of rising actors. However, a swift plummet to obscurity followed their slight rise to fame and they died in debt.

Larry is the twin they reared and he has become a not so clever criminal. In New York running a scam, Larry realizes he has been targeted for termination. By a carefully contrived coincidence he meets George and sets George up to take the fall by assuming his identity. He then inflicts head wounds upon himself, and when he awakens in the hospital claims amnesia.

This of course accounts for the fact that he has no recollection of his agreement with Sara to separate. Larry would be happy with a divorce until he finds that Sara’s husband had signed a prenuptial agreement. As a widower he would stand to gain far more, so he begins to plan.

Steve, the first love, is suddenly accused of murder. The victim is coincidentally the secretary to the detective agency that George employed to find his twin. From this point on the book literally almost spirals out of control. Nothing is as it appears.

Some inquiring minds will absolutely love this book. Since so much is contrived to be a coincidence, other readers will bore quickly with this device of synchronicity. In many respects it is a tediously expositive rendition of the subject citing one coincidence after another drawn from present day facts. And of course, for this author, the subject would not be complete without the introduction of I Ching to attempt to bring sense to the concepts.

--Thea Davis