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3.78 AVERAGE
3.78 AVERAGE
adventurous
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Plodding at times, better at others, but certainly not one of Baldacci's better novels. The ending was somewhat of a surprise, but even so, it felt to me like the book would never end!
Great start to a new-to-me series. Reading everything Baldacci right now and this one was memorable. Like the setting, like the two leads and the first story was a page-turner. Can't ask for much better.
fast-paced
Much better than I expected. Some parts were cliche. Maxwell is the perfect woman and King is the dark and brooding man. However the mystery was well played out and the plot twists were for the most part surprising.
Great twists and turns but a touch too scooby doo at the conclusion, definitely read another of his books though.
Fantastic!! This book had me riveted from the beginning to end. I picked it up to read every opportunity I could find, and can't wait to start the next in the series. Brilliant.
The beginning of the Sean King and Michelle Maxwell series, which I think is one of Baldacci's most compelling and interesting series of books (along with the Camel Club series). Get started here and then read them all.
Here are the positives: I sort of liked the main characters, and the central mystery was intriguing enough that I wanted to see how it turned out.
That's why I'm clicking two stars instead of one.
Unfortunately, having finished, the mystery holds up to no scrutiny whatsoever. The villain's motives are paper thin and the people helping him are helping him for reasons that are never deeply explored. In a good thriller, the realization of who was pulling the strings is surprising but causes all the dominoes to fall into place. Here, the story had withheld so much crucial information from me that when the killer is revealed, it fell flat, and pages of exposition were then necessary to explain this reveal. You can't write a mystery by just refusing to share any information with the reader. Every time King or Maxwell learned a vital clue and thought "wow - this changes everything" but then did not divulge it to each other or to me, I rolled my eyes.
I could also have done without every single one of the interlude chapters revealing what the bad guys were doing. Baldacci wants to have it both ways - a third person omniscient narrator that checks in on what the killers are up to, but also completely preserves the secrecy of their identities, which means all of those chapters feature "the man from the Buick" and "the guy who had pretended to be Simmons" skulking about making vague, nefarious preparations. If you aren't going to use names or reveal any information that could give anything away... maybe just leave those chapters out and we can instead learn things as the protagonists learn them?
Above everything else, though, the writing is just not good. The best passages reach a level of generic workmanlike prose - moving the story from A to B unremarkably. The worst are... really something. Here is a real sentence from page 417, right after an explosion: "She felt all sorts of heavy things hitting all around her." Another sentence introduces a new character as "Walter Bishop, a man very high up in the Secret Service".
I did finish the book so credit must be given to Baldacci for giving King and Maxwell enough personality that I stuck around to see what happened to them rather than chucking the book against a wall. I went into this with only moderate expectations - a light, fun thriller read I could use as a palate cleanser between other books. It somehow still disappointed me.
That's why I'm clicking two stars instead of one.
Unfortunately, having finished, the mystery holds up to no scrutiny whatsoever. The villain's motives are paper thin and the people helping him are helping him for reasons that are never deeply explored. In a good thriller, the realization of who was pulling the strings is surprising but causes all the dominoes to fall into place. Here, the story had withheld so much crucial information from me that when the killer is revealed, it fell flat, and pages of exposition were then necessary to explain this reveal. You can't write a mystery by just refusing to share any information with the reader. Every time King or Maxwell learned a vital clue and thought "wow - this changes everything" but then did not divulge it to each other or to me, I rolled my eyes.
I could also have done without every single one of the interlude chapters revealing what the bad guys were doing. Baldacci wants to have it both ways - a third person omniscient narrator that checks in on what the killers are up to, but also completely preserves the secrecy of their identities, which means all of those chapters feature "the man from the Buick" and "the guy who had pretended to be Simmons" skulking about making vague, nefarious preparations. If you aren't going to use names or reveal any information that could give anything away... maybe just leave those chapters out and we can instead learn things as the protagonists learn them?
Above everything else, though, the writing is just not good. The best passages reach a level of generic workmanlike prose - moving the story from A to B unremarkably. The worst are... really something. Here is a real sentence from page 417, right after an explosion: "She felt all sorts of heavy things hitting all around her." Another sentence introduces a new character as "Walter Bishop, a man very high up in the Secret Service".
I did finish the book so credit must be given to Baldacci for giving King and Maxwell enough personality that I stuck around to see what happened to them rather than chucking the book against a wall. I went into this with only moderate expectations - a light, fun thriller read I could use as a palate cleanser between other books. It somehow still disappointed me.