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Summary
Summary
Two Secret Service agents sworn to guard their protectees lost them in a single moment . . . and in this #1 New York Times bestseller, they're about to learn that the violence has just begun.
Michelle Maxwell has just wrecked her promising career at the Secret Service. Against her instincts, she let a presidential candidate out of her sight for the briefest moment and the man whose safety was her responsibility vanished into thin air.
Sean King knows how the younger agent feels. Eight years earlier, the hard-charging Secret Service agent allowed his attention to be diverted for a split second. And the candidate he was protecting was gunned down before his eyes. Now Michelle and Sean are about to see their destinies converge.
Drawn into a maze of lies, secrets, and deadly coincidences, the two discredited agents uncover a shocking truth: that the separate acts of violence that shattered their lives were really a long time in the making--and are a long way from over.
Author Notes
David Baldacci was born in Richmond, Virginia on August 5, 1960. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from Virginia Commonwealth University and a Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia. He practiced law in Washington D.C. as a trial and corporate lawyer.
His first novel, Absolute Power, was published in 1996. It won Britain's prestigious W.H. Smith's Thumping Good Read award for fiction in 1997 and was adapted as a movie starring Clint Eastwood. His other works include Total Control, The Winner, The Simple Truth, Saving Faith, True Blue, One Summer and End Game. He writes numerous series including King and Maxwell, Freddy and the French Fries, the Camel Club, Will Robie, Shaw and Katie James, John Puller, Vega Jane, and Amos Decker. He also published a novella entitled Office Hours and has authored five original screenplays.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
"We just solved a huge, complicated mystery," says one protagonist to another in this latest novel from the bestselling author of Last Man Standing, Absolute Power, etc. And that is the problem: this story of two disgraced Secret Service agents who come together to solve two campaign-trail crimes doesn't play to Baldacci's strengths, which are suspense and action (as well as strong characterizations; here's one thriller author who writes people that readers care about). The novel is primarily a mystery, with lots of talk and untangling of clues, and a less than gripping one at that. It begins in 1996, when Secret Service agent Sean King is distracted-by what isn't revealed until near the book's end-just when the presidential candidate he's guarding is shot dead. Eight years later, agent Michelle Maxwell lets the candidate she's watching enter a funeral parlor room alone; he's kidnapped. Then a body appears in the office of King, who's now a successful lawyer in North Carolina. Maxwell sees King on TV and decides to look into the event that caused his disgrace, so similar to hers. Meanwhile, King's old flame, Joan Dillinger, an ex-agent whose security firm has been hired to find the kidnapped presidential candidate, hires King to help in the hunt. The narrative ties binding the characters don't loosen much over the novel's course, as curious cross-currents flow between the two cases, all leading to a cinematic but off-the-wall denouement that reveals a villain who is more cartoon than human. What saves this novel are a few strong but brief action sequences and, above all, the interplay among the principal characters, particularly the romantic tensions among King, Maxwell and Dillinger. This is, alas, Baldacci's weakest thriller in years-but with its terrific title, the Baldacci name and heavy promo, it's bound to hit the lists. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Two defrocked Secret Service Agents investigate the assassination of one presidential candidate and the kidnapping of another. Baldacci (The Christmas Train, 2002, etc.) sets out with two plot strands. The first begins when something distracts Secret Service Agent Sean King and during that "split second," presidential candidate Clyde Ritter is shot dead. King takes out the killer, but that's not enough to save his reputation with the Secret Service. He retires and goes on to do often tedious but nonetheless always lucrative work (much like a legal thriller such as this) at a law practice. Plot two begins eight years later when another Secret Service Agent, Michelle Maxwell, lets presidential candidate John Bruno out of her sight for a few minutes at a wake for one of his close associates. He goes missing. Now Maxwell, too, gets in dutch with the SS. Though separated by time, the cases are similar and leave several questions unanswered. What distracted King at the rally? Bruno had claimed his friend's widow called him to the funeral home. The widow (one of the few characters here to have any life) says she never called Bruno. Who set him up? Who did a chambermaid at Ritter's hotel blackmail? And who is the man in the Buick shadowing King's and Maxwell's every move? King is a handsome, rich divorce, Maxwell an attractive marathon runner. Will they join forces and find each other kind of, well, appealing? But of course. The two former agents traverse the countryside, spinning endless hypotheses before the onset, at last, of a jerrybuilt conclusion that begs credibility and offers few surprises. Assembly-line legal thriller: flat characters, lame scene-setting, and short but somehow interminable action: a lifeless concoction. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Baldacci's new thriller is sustained by the pulse-pounding suspense his fans have come to expect. Sean King is a former Secret Service agent whose career ended eight years ago when the political candidate he was protecting was assassinated. Now a lawyer, King has organized his life to forget his past, but it barges rudely in on him when he finds a colleague murdered in his office building. Further complicating his life are two women: Joan Dillinger, a former coworker and lover, and Michelle Maxwell, a Secret Service agent whose candidate, John Bruno, has just been kidnapped. Sean and Michelle start to suspect that their candidates' fates are connected and begin to investigate any ties the two may have to each other. It doesn't help that the police are on King's case, especially when yet another body turns up, this time in King's house. King and Maxwell turn their focus to Arnold Ramsey, the man who assassinated King's candidate, but it remains unclear if he was working alone. Meanwhile, the danger mounts, for neither King nor Maxwell can guess who the conspirators' next target is. KristineHuntley.
Library Journal Review
Former Secret Service Agent Sean King tries for vindication, having lost his job when the candidate he was protecting lost his life. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.