Recursion

Recursion is a thriller and science fiction novel by the American writer Blake Crouch, first published in the United States in June 2019 by the Crown Publishing Group, a subsidiary of Penguin Random House. The novel explores themes of memory, identity and time.

The plot begins with a case. In 2018 the NYPD detective Barry Sutton encounters a woman suffering from False Memory Syndrome, a condition that gives people memories of lives they never lived, and after he fails to prevent her suicide he begins investigating the condition himself. The trail leads him to a hotel operated by a businessman named Marcus Slade, who captures him and interrogates him about his greatest regret. The syndrome gives people memories of lives they never lived, and its victims are driven to suicide by the gap between the two sets of recollection.

The neuroscientist Helena Smith provides the other half of the story, since her work on memory preservation is what makes the phenomenon possible. The novel's threat is therefore not a disease but something that alters the past, and the two protagonists have to work together against it. It was a New York Times bestseller on the combined print and e-book fiction list in June 2019.