Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Nothing Simple Here. . .

I just finished the latest of David Baldacci's thrillers to come out in paperback. There is nothing simple about Simple Genius. It is a finely woven tale with plenty of opportunities to head off in the wrong direction.





The heroes once again are ex-secret service agents Sean King and Michelle Maxwell. The main story is sandwiched between an opening that displays the manifestation of some serious psychological issues of Michelle's and closes with a revelation of the early childhood source of those issues. Along the way, Sean brings in a psychologist friend, Horatio Barnes to help Michelle; he does but he is also around to participate in the main story involving an "unusual laboratory" and a CIA installation lying across the river from each other in Virginia.


Part of the enjoyment I found in reading this Baldacci work is that almost everything that happened was beyond easy explanation and there were plenty of interesting and unexpected twists and turns. Sean and Michelle are given clues by a girl described as autistic who is also labeled as having "extraordinary genius." The main story starts a bit slowly and then gathers momentum as it races to its wild conclusion. I found Simple Genius to be another fine Baldacci volume. As I finished this book, I was already anticipating his next offering.

2 comments:

Sidney said...

I loved Absolute Power. Guess that goes back a while. Hey, if you have time I'm tagging you for the Six Unremarkable Things meme. The rules are on my blog.

Leon said...

Thanks for the tag Sidney. I had seen that Shauna tagged you and figured it was a matter of time until someone passed it on to me. Now, to find the time. . . ;~)