Product Description

Sean King and Michelle Maxwell are both haunted by their last case. Realizing that Michelle is teetering on the brink of self-destruction from long-buried demons, Sean arranges therapy for his reluctant partner. But instead of focusing on her recovery, Michelle unearths disturbing secrets in the hospital . . .

Sean accepts a much-needed job. A physicist, Monk Turing, has died in mysterious circumstances near Babbage Town – a secretive establishment populated by an eccentric group of scientists and cryptographers, funded by an anonymous but powerful group. Meanwhile the dead man’s young daughter, piano-playing prodigy Viggie, has secrets of her own. But what is the significance of the phrase ‘codes and blood’?

Directly across the York River from Babbage Town lies the sinister CIA training ground, Camp Peary, where Monk Turing’s body was found. With both the FBI and CIA breathing down Sean's neck, can he discover the truth? And will he be in time to save Michelle from herself?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5457 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Amazon.co.uk
With a series of ever more accomplished novels, David Baldacci has been building something of a reputation for himself as one of the most reliable practitioners of the modern crime/thriller novel. The emphasis is, of course, usually on Baldacci's métier, the legal arena, and it's clearly the field he is most comfortable in -- as in Simple Genius. His long-term protagonists, Sean King and Michelle Maxwell, have found that the aftermath of their last case has stayed with them in an unpleasant way, and Michelle is obliged to undergo therapy. Sean, his financial circumstances straightened, takes on a job. A scientist is dead in a nearby town -- the scene of the (possible) crime is a clandestine research institute peopled by a large cast of neurotic scientists. There are secrets galore to be unearthed here, and just across the river from the institute there is another clandestine institution, the CIA training ground, Camp Peary, where the dead man's body was originally discovered. Sean finds himself at bay, with several government security services on his tail, even as Michelle struggles to regain her mental equilibrium.

As in such page-turning thrillers as Hour Game and Split Second, David Baldacci knows how to keep the reader thoroughly engrossed, and never loses the capacity to surprise us with the revelations that his beleaguered hero and heroine become party to. This is one of the longest Baldacci books, weighing in at nearly 600 pages, and there are lengthy appendices after the novel proper has finished. These may not retrospectively add to the appeal of the book of the reader has just finished, but they show that Baldacci has -- as always -- done his homework. --Barry Forshaw

About the Author

David Baldacci is the author of fifteen previous consecutive New York Times bestsellers. With his books published in over 40 languages in more than 80 countries, and with nearly 70 million copies in print, he is one of the world’s favourite storytellers.

Customer Reviews

Entertaining thrills
This is the first Baldacci book I've read and I'll now go back and read others, including the previous Sean and Michelle books (plus I hope there'll be another). I found the book a fun, thrilling and fast read with enough background research to provide added interest (hadn't heard of quantum computers). OK, so at times it felt quickly written and could have done with a little more depth, but I still found the book very enjoyable and I'm surprised at the negative reviews.

A Code Enthusiast's Thriller

If you love books about secret codes, Simple Genius will be a book you'll long treasure. If you like thrillers that teem with action, sex scenes, obscure martial arts, and high-tech weaponry, this book will seem like a yawn.

As Mr. Baldacci warns you, don't read the Author's Note until after you finish the book. But don't miss that note if you read and like the book. It's a marvelous look into how the story was constructed.

What I found most delightful about Simple Genius was that the plot development kept surprising me. Sure, the general outlines are foreshadowed intentionally (so that you don't get lost in the maze of details), but the specifics shift unexpectedly. In fact, midway through the book, I literally jumped out of my chair with surprise when one change occurred involving the medical examiner.

Simple Genius is intellectually dense. You'll be exposed to more psychology, code breaking, quantum computers, and history than you would normally find in 20 thrillers combined. To Mr. Baldacci's credit, he keeps it as simple as possible without insulting your intelligence.

As the book opens, former Secret Service agents turned PIs, Sean King and Michelle Maxwell have hit bottom. They don't have any work, and Michelle picks a potentially lethal fight with the toughest guy she can find in the roughest bar in town. It takes the last of Sean's money, but he persuades Michelle to seek psychiatric help from an old friend, Dr. Horatio Barnes. Barnes quickly concludes that Michelle is punishing herself, but for what?

Desperate to keep Michelle in treatment, Sean calls his former love and begs for a job. He gets the job, on the condition that Michelle is kept away.

Sean is to find out why Monk Turing, a scientist, appears to have committed suicide inside the CIA's highly classified facility informally referred to as the Farm. The scientist had worked at a very secretive installation cross the river from the Farm. No one wants to tell Sean anything. He cannot even find out who his clients are.

Sean's heart is deeply touched by Viggie, the 11-year-old daughter of the scientist, a mathematical genius whose emotional and social development is retarded.

Sean finds he cannot make much progress until Michelle releases herself from the mental hospital. But can either of them count on her mental stability? Michelle finds herself in the unexpected nurturing role for Viggie.

Michelle is by far the most interesting character in the book. She's super human physically and intensely flawed psychologically at the same time, reminding me of the myth of Achilles. I found in her a metaphor for the modern world with its ability to do increasingly great things materially while becoming ever more spiritually and psychologically barren.

In addition to enjoying the thriller, you'll find this book will also leave you with lots of food for thought.

Enjoy!

(3.5*) Sadly simple but no genius...
This was my first Baldacci and I found it all surface shine with very little underneath. The premise sounded intriguing: a quasi-secret code-breaking establishment working on inventing the quantum computer, set in the midst of both a US Naval establishment and a CIA facility. And with all the gumf about code-breaking etc (which Baldacci inserts well) I was looking forward to a bit of intellectual puzzlement. Sadly this is all pretty much irrelevant to the actual story, which doesn't really involve code-breaking or ciphers at all, and could equally well have been set anywhere that happened to be next door to the CIA.

The two protagonists are pleasant enough company, and the writing has an ease and flow that keeps the pages turning in a leisurely but never edge-of-your-seat kind of way. As another reviewer has mentioned there are really two stories going on here and while they sort of integrate, they don't add anything to each other.

With a whole load of stuff thrown in: the said quantum-computers, WW2 Enigma machines, buried colonial treasure, murder, drug-smuggling, secret airplanes, the possibility of terrorist torture chambers, the FBI, the CIA, the DEA... there's more than enough to keep us occupied, but at heart this is a very simple story. I had to giggle at the end when the police are called in to `arrest' the CIA!

So overall this is a competent and fun read: not obtrusive and desperate over-writing, characters whose company you can enjoy, a bit of gentle mystery etc, but it's no more than that. As other reviewers have said, Baldacci rather over-eggs the whole thing with his characters' names (Turing, Ventris, Chadwick, Champ Pollion: the `inventor' of the computer; the decipherers of linear B, the decipherer of the hieroglyphs) and there are likely to be others that I just wasn't aware off. This seems a little childish and unnecessary since code-breaking isn't really necessary to the story... and he caps it with Valerie Messaline, a nod to Valeria Messalina more commonly known as Messalina the wife of the emperor Claudius immortalised by Tacitus and Robert Graves' I, Claudius...

So an entertaining 3.5* read but completely throw-away, and it didn't leave me keen to read any more Baldacci.