I'm alive... and Reading some Baldacci!

I'm alive. I am still ready (or listening if you are being technical about it).

Haven't reviewed a book in ages but I have been reading some REALLY great stuff this year and have found myself wanting to yell out my wonderful finds for a while. So I'll tell you...

I've been reading some David Baldacci.

I heart this man. He is my Dean Koontz (my sister loves Dean Koontz and reads everything he has been publishing lately). Baldacci really does it for me. I love him.

I noticed he had a new book out last month and when I read about it I noticed that it was a second installment to a NEW series! I had not read the first installment when it was published in 2008 so I had the pleasure of reading BOTH books back to back.

The Whole Truth is the first book in the Shaw & James series. Shaw works for some mysterious govermental agency that may or may not be sanctioned but the current goverment. He has fallen in love and is ready to quit but, of course, that won't be happening...  Kate James is a journalist that has screwed up her career and has been swimming in the bottom of a bottle of booze for a while.

When Shaw saves Kate's life she realizes that this guy just might be her ticket back to stardom. That relationship changes very quickly when she realizes that his life is going down the toilet real fast and the story she is after is not worth the world chaos it would cause.

There is a puppet master that is pulling all the strings and it just might be too late for Kate to back away.

The book was wonderful and I loved all the peeps we met. Typical Baldacci with characters that we just love and invest in. Shaw's personal tragedy and Katie's growth make us want more and more and more of them.

This year, Baldacci gave us the followup... Deliver Us From Evil.

For some reason Kate is absent for most of this book so I was a bit disappointed there but we get a good serving  of Shaw (still no first name, just an initial).

We are also introduced to Regina who is on a mission to kill all the former Nazi military who have evaded judgement for their past crimes. She is part of a group of assasins that are methodically killing the officers that are known to have killed mercilessly. She meets her match in Evan Waller who is still as much a vicious killer as he was back in his youth.

Shaw is in France to capture Waller who is trying to sell bombs to a terrorist group but finds that Regina (posing as a rich American) might be in danger from Waller. When he gets new orders he has to decide to either walk away from the mess or save the day. His actions put Katie, who is far removed from current events, in the sightline of a psycho killer.

I would have loved more Shaw and Kate but it was enough to tied me over until the next book, which I'm sure I'll have to wait too long for.

Stone Cold by David Baldacci

I love David Baldacci as an author. He has so much to give those readers that could care less about the HEA in a story and are adrenaline junkies. His books just keep you glued to your chair and keep you guessing. Even his bad books (yeah, everyone can't be perfect) are really not bad. And if you are returning to a group of characters you have grown to love... It's the bomb!

Stone Cold is the last of the Camel Club series and it picks up where The Collectors left off. We left our merry bunch of conspiracy theorist completely unaware that shunned mob boss Jerry Baggert was closing in on our newest member of the club, Annabelle Conroy because she conned him out of mula money. She is determined to pack her bags and flee the scene but Oliver convinces her to stay and stand her ground. He has a plan and one of the players is someone Annabelle would more likely not be around. Her Father, Patty Conroy.

Patty is very ill and is regretful for many things in his life but most of all he regrets not being there when his wife was killed at the hands of Baggert. It seems he was not guilty of abandoning his wife and child to this monster but just not able to get to them in time. Between Patty, Annabelle, Oliver and Alex Ford (another side member of the club and ex-secret service agent) a plan takes shape to end Baggerts tyranny and avenge those that have been hurt by his actions. Unfortunately there is another plan afoot and Oliver has to turn tail and run himself.

This new plot brings an assassin into the fold. The assassin is systematically killing off old tripe 6 members. John Carr (Oliver Stone for us fangirls) is off his radar because John is supposedly dead and buried but when Carter Gray exposes Oliver's true identity, he has to go on the offensive instead of waiting for Finn (our local assassin) to come for him.

This last installment brings closure to many of the story lines that have carried over since our first intro to the Camel Club. We find out more about John Carr's life and what made him take the persona of Oliver Stone. We also discover Carter Gray's role in John's life. We also lose one of our Camel Club members making it impossible to ever get back the lightheartedness of this group of friends. Baldacci wraps things up nicely although not in the HEA way we would like but he does give us the resolution needed to rest on this series. And yet... I hope Baldacci finds it in his heart to bring the group together again.

For those new to the series, to really enjoy this one you NEED to read the first two installments. Stone Cold will be released in Paperback on Aug. 26th 2008. The others (The Camel Club & The Collectors) are already available in Paperback and for those like me that prefer to hear it, they are all available in Audiobook as well.

Grade: A
Format: Audiobook

The Collectors by David Baldacci

David Baldacci is always a pleasure to read. He is among the authors that write fiction that I can sink my teeth in, always a mystery to solve, always a conspiracy to pursue, always characters to love. This book was one that I needed to listen to long before now and I just had not gotten my hands on the Audio version. I finally did and loved it!

This is a second installment of the Camel Club adventures. The first book, aptly titled The Camel Club, suffered a bit getting off the ground but had recuperated by the end of the book. What was important about that book is that it introduced us to a group of characters that stuck with you and after reading this one you just love these guys!

The Camel Club is comprised by four older men that at first seem not to have anything in common but when they get together they are a force to be reckoned with - they seek to uncover the truth hidden among those that promise to serve the country in Washington, DC.

Oliver Stone (whose real name is John Carr) is the head of the group, he has a mysterious background that we know has a lot to do with killing for his country. Milton Farb is the one with the photographic memory, a computer genius that can get into any system out there. Ruben Rhodes, the muscle among the group and Caleb Shaw, a reference specialist in the Library of Congress who swims among the sharks and brings the information home.

The Collectors starts off with murder and keeps the bodies rolling, page after page. First to go down is Senator Bradley, the Speaker of the House and third in line to the presidency, but although that assassination was public and claimed as an act of terrorism, the Camel Club finds that it is connected to the death of Jonathan Dehaven, the Director of the rare book division in the Library of Congress. When Caleb is proclaimed the literary executor of Jonathan's personal rare book collection, the Camel Club needs to find the link between these murders to insure that Caleb is not found dead as well.

As the team investigates the murders, more bodies keep piling up and ever page brings us closer to uncovering an espionage ring that is selling off America, one secret at a time.

A side story brings Annabelle Conroy to join the ranks of the Camel Club. She is the greatest con artist of her time and has taken on as an enemy Jerry Bagger, one of the most dangerous casino owners in Atlantic City by stealing 40 million from under his nose. The con was a personal one since he had murdered her mother when she was a child. She is now on the run but when she hears about Dehaven's death (who was her ex-husband) she heads to Washington and joins Oliver and the gang in their investigation.

Baldacci has a talent to bring to life a montage of characters, all with their distinct personalities and melt them into a cohesive plot that keeps us glued to the story, page after page. We know the players up front but the how did they do it and can they get away with it, drives the story forward.

The book leaves a big loose end (on purpose) which has me scrambling to find a copy of the next book in the series, Stone Cold. In a sense I'm happy I had not found this book until Stone Cold was published because I would be killing someone if I could not find out what is going to happen next.

Grade: A
Format: Audiobook

The Camel Club by David Baldacci

I discovered Baldacci a little while ago when I exhausted most of the audiobook selection at my local library. I discovered he is an excellent writer of suspenseful fiction. In his latest, The Camel Club, he deviates from his usual 'get to know your characters and then throw them into a precarious situation.'

This one was... interesting. For half of the book I had no idea where it was going. At first I thought the plot was about the assassination of a federal employee which was witnessed by a rag tag group of conspiracy theorist called The Camel Club. The group is mostly formed by older ex-military who have been let down by their government.

Oliver Stone lost his wife and child to the dangerous career he chose and now lives as a homeless man who works at a cemetery. The other three, Milton, Caleb and Ruben, have different stories but all are outcasts of society and all have a reason to question their government. When they witness the murder of a man while holding one of their Camel Club meetings they try to find out why this person was important enough to have the government (because the assassins where government men) want him dead. Or maybe it was just the second hand to the president himself, Carter Gray, who ordered the killings.

Well, when you think this is going on the murder / chase / government conspiracy track you get side swiped when you learn there is a plot to assassinate the President (who I didn't sympathize with). The man who is organizing the attack against the president is unmasked to the reader by the middle of the book but this does not take away from the story since the plot is not so much about who dun it by how the hell he do it.

With the help of Alex Ford, a federal agent that gets demoted to secret service guard duty after he screws up the murder investigation he was assigned to; Kate, the bartender / lawyer who is dating Alex and other host of characters that keep us on our toes, our Camel Club try to stop the plot against the president and then try to save the country from nuclear war.

If I can forget the fact that this book was mostly all over the place for the first half of the book, I would say I enjoyed it very much. There were many characters to follow but Baldacci gave everyone a distinct personality and in small degrees explored them all. We see not just the Camel Club in action but we follow closely the terrorist that have been recruited to do the dirty work for a cause they deeply believe in. At point we actually sympathize with some of them and when we discover what this plot against the president really is, we can't even hold a grudge against the person who coordinated the whole thing.

A bit confusing at first, this one ended up redeeming itself in the end.

Grade: B-
Format: Audiobook