There are 100s of bad guys and minimal law enforcement officers and it looks like the bad guys are winning! That is until Robie and Reel get involved. Baldacci was a consulting producer on King & Maxwell, a TNT television series based on his characters Sean King and Michelle Maxwell. Jon Tenney and Rebecca Romijn starred. At the time I appreciated the deviation because I was worried having not read previous books in the series may have been a disadvantage. It wasn’t. Similarly, it doesn’t matter if you’re meeting these characters for the first time in this latest installment as Baldacci does a great job at introducing them to us via James Bond-esque style opening sequences. Last seen in rural Colorado, Blue Man had taken a rare vacation to go fly fishing in his hometown when he disappeared off the grid. With no communications since, the team can't help but fear the worst.

Freddy and the French Fries: Fries Alive! ( Little, Brown and Company, 2005), Baldacci's debut novel for young readers It begins with Luther Whitney breaking into a home, something he does often and for a living. Baldacci explains that Whitney doesn’t carry a weapon, but rather prefers to rely on his skills to do the job. One night Whitney is witness to an unexpected tryst in the bedroom, trapped in the closet and unable to leave without revealing himself and possibly getting injured. As the lovemaking between the man and woman turns violent, Whitney unintentionally is the sole witness to murder. David Baldacci has been writing since childhood, when his mother gave him a lined notebook in which to write down his stories. (Much later, when David thanked her for being the spark that ignited his writing career, she revealed that she’d given him the notebook to keep him quiet, "because every mom needs a break now and then.”) Will Robie and Jessica are two of my favorite Baldacci characters. Their developing closeness than pulling away from each other adds conflict to an all-ready exciting and tense relationship. And the mystery surrounding the Blue Man plays out in a personal and revealing manner that adds depth and sincerity to both his character and the series mythology. He had been selected for this line of work with the basic requirements already in place: He had a body, he had a mind, and he feared basically nothing.

I mentioned in my review of David Baldacci’s previous Will Robie book, The Guilty(published in 2015), that it wasn’t a series I knew well. In fact, I was a latecomer to the series but that book took Will (and his erstwhile partner Jessica Reel) out of his usual spy / assassin / government agent role and had a more personal twist.

Last seen in rural Colorado, Blue Man had taken a rare vacation to go fly fishing in his hometown when he disappeared off the grid. With no communications since the team can’t help but fear the worst. Gresham, Tom (December 11, 2019). "David Baldacci once wrote stories in secret at VCU. Now he has millions of readers around the world". Virginia Commonwealth University.When they arrive in Grand, Colorado (Roger Walton’s hometown), they not only discover that Walton was in town, but has vanished; tey also discover that a number of other people have also vanished. Robie and Reel will work with the understaffed police, sheriff (Molloy) and deputy. What they will also find is that the area has a number of right wing compounds such as Kings Apostles and White Supremacist groups. Will and Jessica are not your normal government agents, and this book just proves that they are the best lethal assassins, and despite each horrific situation they find themselves in, they will find a way to turn the tables and survive. Will they find Blue Man alive? Will they survive against all the powerful enemies they must face? Now I don’t know about small-town America but I wondered whether rural Australia has similarly sordid (and exciting) underbellies; as Grand in Colorado is resplendent with a religious cult, luxury doomsday preppers, skinheads and Neo Nazis. (And I had always thought the last two were the same thing, so was a bit confused on that front!) The local sheriff and her deputy and even the state troopers tend to take a ‘hands-off’ approach when dealing with the groups, knowing they’re is significantly outnumbered. While practicing law, he turned to novel writing, taking three years to write Absolute Power. [4] Published in 1996, it was sold internationally. To date, Baldacci has published 46 novels for adults as well as seven novels for younger readers. So no let downs here, as Will Robie and Jessica Reel are two of my favourite characters from one of my favourite authors.

Update 2022 Re-read this book. Still a great book and I really enjoyed reading it now after I've read all the previous books in the series. Baldacci's novels have been published in over 45 languages and in more than 80 countries, with over 130 million worldwide sales as of 2018. [9] Bibliography [ edit ] Sean King and Michelle Maxwell series [ edit ] He then graduated from the University of Virginia with a law degree. He then went to Washington, D.C., where he practiced trial and corporate law for nine years. While living in Alexandria, Baldacci continued to write, penning short stories and screenplays, without much success. It was then that he decided to try his hand at novels. He sat down and wrote his first novel Absolute Power, which was published in 1996. Today he lives in North Virginia with his wife and their two children and two dogs. Baldacci began writing stories as a child, when his mother gave him a notebook in which to record them. [2] He wrote for more than two decades, penning short stories and later screenplays without much success. [3] Memmott, Carol (February 27, 2013). "David Baldacci clues kids in to Smithsonian's treasures". USA Today. McLean, VA: Gannett. ISSN 0734-7456 . Retrieved 17 May 2013.Will and Jess had a ‘moment’ at the end of the last book but when this book opens they’ve not seen each other for six months and Will’s at a bit of a loss as to why. Jess is no help to us because – although we’re in both of their heads – Baldacci probably identifies more with Will so it felt like we were keeping his secrets rather than Jess’s. Two of the government’s most lethal assassins scour rural Colorado to find their missing handler–and discover an insidious and lethal threat along the way in this New York Times bestselling thriller. The series is about two Secret Service agents who have fallen from grace after the political candidate King is guarding gets assassinated and the person Maxine Maxwell is guarding gets kidnapped. Split Second is the first book in the series published in 2003. In it, Maxwell is drawn to King’s case which is a good thing since a string of murders have him under suspicion. The action and pressure heat up as they get deeper into a series of coincidence that may have more to do with the past than the present. Then over the years they had ground into him a whole other being, still possessing the basics plus a spectrum of skills that most people could never imagine, much less achieve.