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Title: Split Second by David Baldacci ISBN: 0-446-53089-1 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 30 September, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.31 (107 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Excellent thriller -Ending was a little too unbelievable
Comment: Secret Service Agent Michelle Maxwell let a presidential candidate out of her sight against her better judgment. He disappears with a trace. Eight years ago, Sean King's career as a secret service agent was derailed when the presidential candidate he was protecting was killed in front of him when his attention was diverted for a split second. Michelle and Sean's lives entwine when the circumstances of their respective screw-ups appear to be related.
David Baldacci has written another winner. This was book had me hooked from the first page. The plot was skillfully written interweaving past and present facts. We have two very compelling protagonists that look like they were set up for a sequel, at least I hope so. This is the kind of thriller that keeps you on your toes from the first page to the last. It would have been a 5 star book, except the climax was a bit too unbelievable. It was almost like a light bulb went off and suddenly the case is solved. It all unraveled a little too fast. I don't want to give too much away, but the first 4/5 of the book was so good that the ending really did not detract from my overall enjoyment.
Rating: 2
Summary: Could have been good...
Comment: David Baldacci often writes thriller fiction well worth reading. He is a crafty plotter of imaginative, engrossing tales and his dialog is often credible and sensitive to his characters' very distinct personalities. ABSOLUTE POWER was an absolutely fantastic read, even if Clint Eastwood's film version hardly measured up. Even TOTAL CONTROL and SAVING FAITH turned on intriguing plot points, strong characterization and Baldacci's talent for evocative and meaningful (mostly) East Coast locales (an important feature most writers and film/TV directors take too much for granted, if at all). While SPLIT SECOND contains some of these positive elements, it is a huge letdown. The story takes a while to get going. It's highly unbelievable; but willful suspension of disbelief is a good thing when reading any sort of fiction. However, when the two main protagonists/good guys finally hook up, the book does become quite compelling. And then...there's the revelation about what the whole thing's about. It's unbelievable, absurd and makes the reader - who, at this point, has endured some 350 pages of knowing nonsense - cringe with disbelief and anger. It's a cheat and as phony and unnecessarily silly as most of Baldacci's previous book, THE CHRISTMAS TRAIN. The denouement here is most ridiculous - even his characters in the book seem to infer this. There's nothing wrong with fun reading like this. But SPLIT SECOND - whose title is about as generic and without personality as it gets - suggests that Baldacci built another potentially fascinating maze and used a cheap axe to chop his way out.
Rating: 2
Summary: Sadly Disappoining Offering From a Gifted Writer
Comment: I like David Baldacci. I think he's an excellent writer. He has a rare gift where his writing spans subject matters and crosses genres yet he still comes off as an expert in that particular field. He writes about lawyers, single mothers, FBI agents and many other topics with authority. Now he takes on the world of the secret service agent. Unfortunately this time he strikes out.
Sean King was a secret service agent until a momentary distraction cost the life of his charge. Michele Maxwell is a current agent, but maybe not for long now that her charge was kidnapped do mostly to a single mistake. So now, of course, the two disgraced agents hook up, to the dismay of the Service, local cops, the FBI and just about everybody else. Together the try to solve the disappearance of the Presidential candidate that Michele was charge to look after while also shedding new light on the circumstances behind Sean's disgrace. Hey everyone, it's a mystery.
There are so many things that I didn't like about this story. First off, the plot was so complex it was unbelievable and bordering on ridiculous. The "bad guys" motives were very weak. The characters shallow and the tensions created by bureaucratic politics predictable and so over used in today's mystery fiction. The story moved a long at a decent place to the predictable mystery style reveal followed by the bang-bang climatic finish which was anything but climatic.
One of the gimmicks that is used in this story is the mystery bad guy following the good guys and commenting on their doings. Here we see an old man identified only by his make of car watching over the shoulder of our hero's. This is supposed to give us the master manipulator, on top of everything feel of our mastermind bad guys, but it comes off as cheesy.
I think I may be being a bit overly harsh in my review of this book. It was not utter garbage. It's just when you expect so much out of an author based on his history, you tend to judge his failures harsher.
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Title: Bleachers by John Grisham ISBN: 0385511612 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 09 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Big Bad Wolf: A Novel by James Patterson ISBN: 0316602906 Publisher: Little Brown & Company Pub. Date: 17 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: The Last Juror by John Grisham ISBN: 0385510438 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 03 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: Blow Fly: A Scarpetta Novel by Patricia Cornwell ISBN: 0399150897 Publisher: Putnam Pub Group Pub. Date: 13 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: 3rd Degree by James Patterson, Andrew Gross ISBN: 0316603570 Publisher: Little Brown & Company Pub. Date: 01 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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