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.

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.

Led by the NSA, America's security forces descend upon Ancaster, and track down Roberts in South Africa, using Seth's whereabouts to persuade him to return to the United States and determine the veracity of hundreds of video statements.

Roberts learns that the NSA has been tracking other people like him, including a tiny childlike woman named Viola Tripping who can reveal the final thoughts of a deceased person just before death.

Agent Yslan Hicks takes the two of them to the crime scene at Ancaster so that Tripping can read the victims' final thoughts and Roberts can tell if those statements were truthful.

When the trails run cold, Hicks turns to Roberts' old friends for help, but they quickly find themselves confronting an ancient conspiracy, one that draws the synaesthetes, via "waking dreams" of a "glass house", back to The Junction, the place where a young boy was killed by hanging shortly after 1900.

"[15] Only his "closest friends" know about his ability, which he has used for years to supplement his income through a sideline working for companies as a "human lie detector" screening potential new employees.

He knows the parts of the world that I know — Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, New York City, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, North Carolina, Cape Town, Namibia — I think you write what you know.

A close friend of Decker Roberts and "fellow synaesthete",[1] their relationship "goes back a very long time and they obviously have a special understanding between one another, often not needing to ask for explanations or give details.

[21] Introduced in A Murder of Crows, Viola Tripping is presented as "simultaneously a woman and a little girl in both appearance and mannerisms"[10] who can "recite the last thoughts of dead people.

[10] Professor Neil Frost harbours a grudge against his colleagues at Ancaster College, "aggravated by a university system that pays him modestly and ever more frustrated at being denied a full professorship.

"[20] Introduced in The Glass House, WJ is a highly talented mathematician who has used his skills with numbers to become wealthy, but is frustrated by his incapacity to enjoy it for lack of feelings: he cannot appreciate relationships, and concepts like beauty or ugliness "are but words.

[23] Outside the speculative fictional world of the novel, a synaesthete is "someone whose awareness mixes two or more senses"; it is a "documented condition" which occurs naturally but may also be linked to head injuries.

[14] Rotenberg's own conception of synaesthesia elaborates on this as a condition bestowing the person "access to the 'other'", referring to documentaries he had seen on the synaesthete Daniel Tammet, who is also an autistic savant, as an example,[3] a man with "special gifts in mathematics and languages", who sees numbers in colours, shapes and sizes and learned conversational Icelandic in a week.

[24] Rotenberg also referenced autistic savant Stephen Wiltshire ("the human camera"),[3] and Ken Peek, the inspiration for the film Rain Man.

[24] Doubt as to the accuracy of the term in-universe is introduced at the beginning of A Murder of Crows, when NSA Special Agent Yslan Hicks questions the agency's use of "synaesthetes" for describing the people she monitors; Leonard Harrison retorts: "But we had to call them something."

[18] Some of them effectively display "superpowers",[25] some of which potentially qualify as "supernatural";[20] the most outstanding example is Viola Tripping, whom Andrew Wilmot characterizes as really "a medium for speaking to the dead".

"[15] Agreeing with the reasoning behind Rotenberg's decision, Selnes later wrote: "It is tiring to read of fictional heroes being battered about and then swiftly rising again to smite the bad guy.

[28] In The Glass House, what Bill Selnes calls the "touch of the supernatural" in the first two novels "has taken over the story": the synaesthetes' exceptional talents are "supplemented" by "mystical abilities" such as telepathy.

Stephen Patrick Clare said Rotenberg blended the best elements of his previous novels, with a "quirky cast of characters in an entertaining and engaging read that is distinctly Canadian", and dialogue that "is crisp, clear and concise, but never obvious or over-the-top".

That said, the book's weakest link might also be its greatest strength; the author's glaring omission of Roberts' inner life leaves a gaping hole that readers can fill in on their own.

[11]Robert J. Wiersema called it a "somewhat workmanlike" thriller "possessed of an enthralling undercurrent that allows it to transcend its genre and shine on its own terms", and that Rotenberg "reveals a surprising depth and intricacy, not in the mechanics of his plot, but at the level of characterization.

Andrew Wilmot disagrees, finding characterization to be the single greatest problem in the novel, but far from the only one: Rotenberg "plays fast and loose with the concept of synaesthesia.

[10] Valerie Senyk appreciated how Rotenberg built "suspenseful momentum" in telling the story: "It is a pleasure to read intelligent thrillers by Canadian writers.

Joseph Serge thought the "best parts" of A Murder of Crows were those related to the character of the janitor who blows up the graduating class of Ancaster College, comparing this aspect favourably to Thomas Harris' Silence of the Lambs: "Rotenberg gets us inside the mind of the psychopath.

[8] Sarah Weinman finds the action fast-paced, "even a little too frenetic," despite the introspection, "especially on the part of Decker's NSA handler Yslan Hicks", a conflict which "undercuts the believability" of the novel: "it's fun while reading, but the dots don't quite connect the way they are supposed to.

"[19] Andrew Wilmot criticizes the novel for the same flaws he found in The Placebo Effect, such as "frustratingly thin" characters, "a problem that stems in large part from the breakneck pace of each very short chapter".

"[10] Bill Selnes found The Glass House "interesting" but thought it demanded greater suspension of disbelief than the first two novels in the series: "The book became a form of fable requiring the reader to either suspend conventional assessments or accept the plot has become a modern myth.

[31] In early 2012, Rotenberg said that The Placebo Effect had been optioned by a "major" Los Angeles producer who was then working on Justified[6] (elsewhere confirmed as Don Kurt).