(5) = Best; (4) = Better; (3) = Good; (2) = Fair; (1) = OK
These abstracts serve as reminders to myself; they serve to "jog" my memory on what a book was all about. That's all. This is not a literary critique, not a social commentary, and certainly nothing profound to warrant further discussion.
(5) = means that I really enjoyed this book; (1) = means I finished reading it but wonder if my time could have been better spent elsewhere.
I think this is Baldacci’s worse book. He usually captures my immediate attention, and I am bound to his book in one or two sittings. However, I didn’t do that this time. He lost me after the first chapter when Michelle Maxwell starts a bar room fight and is nearly killed. She is a Martial Arts trained killer, and she, of course, is beautiful. She sees a psychiatrist who thinks she had a death wish but really does not want to die. She and Sean King were former Secret Service Agents who have become Private Investigators. A whole cast of isolated characters emerge in the story. There is a precocious, autistic (?) child whose father was killed but the CIA claims his death was a suicide and Sean King was hired to investigate his death. Another scientist is killed but I forget how and when. Nevertheless, Sean King decides both deaths are related. The context of this story occurs in a government owned highly classified secret facility. There are all kinds of characters and events that frustrate Sean’s investigation. We finally learn there are rogue government employees in the CIA and FBI who pretend to be acting in the best interest of America, but who are smuggling heroin into this country. Can you imagine armed federal agents who can and do arrest you without warrants, imprison you secretly, torture and endlessly deprive you of sleep, food and water and finally lock you in a coffin because they are simply “acting in the best interest of the country?” (1).
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