Showing posts with label Baldacci. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Baldacci. Show all posts

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Divine Justice

David Baldacci
©2008 by Columbus Rose, Ltd., Hachette Book Group
523 pp.

From the book: “Known by his alias, “Oliver Stone,” John Carr is the most wanted man in American. With two pulls of the trigger, the men who destroyed Stone’s life and kept him in the shadows were finally silenced.

But his freedom comes at a steep price. The assassinations he carried out prompt the highest levels of the U. S. government to unleash a massive manhunt. Yet behind the scenes, master spy Macklin Hayes is playing a very personal game of cat and mouse. With their friend and unofficial leader in hiding, the members of the Camel Club risk everything to save him. Now as the hunters close in, Stone’s flight from the demons of his past will take him from the power corridors of Washington, D. C., to the coal-mining town of Divine, Virginia – and into a world every bit as bloody and lethal as the one he left behind.”

This book is a sequel to previously written books about Oliver Stone and the Camel Club which I didn’t know when I picked it up. Mr. Baldacci evidently expected his readers to have read the previous books because parts of this plot weren’t clear until quite far into the book. I did enjoy the story and the characters who reminded me of a good TV drama or movie. Lots of action, different story lines, and interesting characters. A little too much violence for my taste but that goes along with this type of story, I guess.

Oliver Stone, AKA John Carr, is a heroic Vietnam vet later drafted by the government for undercover work, mainly carrying out assassinations. When he gets married and has a child, he wants out but finds out it’s not that easy….he knows too much. His wife is killed and his young daughter disappears. He goes into hiding but finally seeks revenge. This is where the book starts and it continues as he goes further into hiding and ends up in a little town in Virginia. Things go downhill from there for Oliver.

I picked up this book at a garage sale.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Absolute Power

Absolute Power
© 1996 by David Baldacci

ISBN: 0-446-60358-9
Publisher: Warner Books
SRP: $7.99
505 pp.
About the book: “ABSOLUTE CORRUPTION - In a heavily guarded mansion in a posh Virginia suburb, a man and a woman start to make love, trapping a burglar behind a secret wall. Then the passion turns deadly, and the witness is running into the night. Because what he has just seen is a brutal slaying involving the President of the United States.

ABSOLUTE DANGER – Luther Whitney is the career break-in artist who’s in the wrong place at the wrong time. Alan Richmond is the charming U. S. President with the power to commit any crime. And Jack Graham is the young attorney, caught in a vortex between the absolute truth – and…….

ABSOLUTE POWER – A tale of greed, sex, ambition, and murder, this is the novel everyone has been talking about….the shattering, relentlessly suspenseful thriller that will change the way you think about Washington – and power – forever.”

This is the second Baldacci book I have read, the other being First Family. That was good but I liked this one even better.

I totally enjoyed this book. It had just the right mix of interesting characters and a suspenseful plot that captured my attention from the start and held it until the last page. It’s not a whodunit because you know from the beginning who commits the crimes and the suspense is in the outcome. It starts right out with a crime being committed by the President and members of his staff and witnessed by a man who just happened to be burglarizing a home at the same time. Knowing no one would believe what he saw and heard the burglar waits for his chance and escapes but not without being noticed. The story progresses with the President and his Chief of Staff trying to keep things quiet and the burglar trying to figure out how to expose them. More and more crimes are committed and people assassinated as the President uses the power of his office to escape detection. Just how far are the Secret Service willing to go to protect the President?

This book was a flea market purchase. The edition of my book is different than the one shown.