My wife has read many Janet Evanovich novels. She mentioned that the story line used to be clever and tight but has become just raunchy. She said the main character, Stephanie Plum, was a bounty hunter, but at the moment she had the wrong idea of a bounty hunter, thinking mostly about animals. In bits and pieces I pulled out of my own mind that a bounty hunter was a person who tracked down those who jump bail. They are hired by bondsmen but have to get a receipt of the capture from the police.
I said I had seen a movie about this, I remember the bondsman kept his money in his socks and the bounty hunter was played by Robert DeNiro. Then it came to me that the movie was "Midnight Run". I checked Google and one of the top entries was the Wikipedia article - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_Run.
The movie was produced in 1988 and I probably watched it on VHS in the early '90s. I didn't remember all the details given in the Wikipedia synopsis, but I did remember that the bail jumper got away (or was let go) and that DeNiro's competitor had gotten DeNiro's credit card cancelled.
I don't claim any particular genius in remembering these long-ago details; most of us have these same capabilities. They are just so hit and miss. We can't remember the name of somebody we met yesterday, but we remember the name of somebody we haven't seen in decades.
I think David Eagleman got it right with "Incognito: The Hidden Lives of the Brain". There are so many processes going on in our brains of which we are not aware. See "Memory and coincidence".
