Product Description

Seven seconds. That's all it took for Web London to lose everything: his friends, his team, his reputation. Point man of the FBI's super-elite Hostage rescue Team, Web roared into a blind alley towards a drug leader's lair, only to meet a high-tech, custom-designed ambush that killed everyone around him.

Coping with the blame-filled words of anguished widows and the suspicions of colleagues, Web tries to put his life back together. To do so, he must discover why he was the one man who lived through the ambush - and find the only other person who came out of the alley alive . . . a ten-year-old boy who has since disappeared. Acting on his instincts, Web believes he knows where the killer will strike next. Only this time, he may not survive the attack.

In this extraordinary work, Baldacci uses his unsurpassed storytelling skills to explore the essence of survival itself, as a conspiracy of violence surrounds an FBI agent whose fate was to be the . . . LAST MAN STANDING.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #48236 in Books
• Published on: 2003-11-21
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 576 pages

Review
'Accomplished and amazing - one of the hottest reads around' (DAILY MAIL) 'A plot strong enough to make the bath go cold around you' (INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY) 'An adrenaline-pumping plot that could, once again, make you late for work' (HEAT)

About the Author

David Baldacci is the seven-time New York Times best-selling author of ABSOLUTE POWER, TOTAL CONTROL, THE WINNER, THE SIMPLE TRUTH, SAVING FAITH, WISH YOU WELL and LAST MAN STANDING. His most recent novel, SPLIT SECOND, will be published by macmillan in December 2003. He lives in Virginia with his wife and two children.

Customer Reviews

10/10 Thriller!
This is my second Baldacci book and it's a cracker!

Web London heads a crack FBI hostage rescue team. His team is wiped out but he survives. Why was the teams set up and wiped out? Why did he survive?

It's over 500 pages long but worth it as Baldacci really nails the characters in this book. There are a good dozen characters along the way that you really get a feel for. You develop a great understanding of what drive the main character in this page turning thriller. There are lots of turns and twists along the way, most of which I did not see coming!

If you like thrillers check this one out for sure. 10/10.

Recovering from Abuse, Deadly Risk-Taking and Revenge!
Caution: The Last Man Standing is not for the squeamish or those who have nightmares about what they read. The book has many scenes of extreme violence and mayhem aimed at good guys and bad. The book's language is also laced with virtually every common swear word that you know.

What differentiates Last Man Standing from the standard shoot-em-up thriller is that Mr. Baldacci explores the mind as much as he does the physical. Providing that context makes the book more intense, meaningful, and complex.

The book's hero, Web London, is also someone you will find interesting and admirable. At his job as a Hostage Rescue Team assaulter for the FBI, he is bold, brave, and extremely capable. But, it has come with a price. He has an unattractively reconstructed face from wounds that makes him seem like Frankenstein to some, a body covered with bullet scars, and no family life. As you will learn in the book, he also had a trouble childhood that makes personal connection seem risky to him.

So, his fellow team members and their families have become his family. Imagine, then, the blow that comes when the six other assaulters are all mown down by machine gun fire during a raid on what was thought to be a drug organization's accounting operation. What makes it worse is that he froze at the start of the assault, or he would be dead with them. Imagine the guilt! To make matters worse, he is suspected of either being a coward or having been paid off. Life gets worse.

It becomes apparent that someone has been leaking confidential FBI information, or this slaughter could not have occurred. Who is it? Why would they want to wipe out a hostage rescue team? How was it accomplished? These are just some of the many mysteries that are brought forth. Soon, others are dying in a pattern that seem to tie back to the escape of Ernest B. Free (leader of the Free Society) from prison. Free had been the cause of the crisis that had led to the death of a little boy hostage in the assault that had cost Web London his face.

Mr. Baldacci has a strength as a story-teller in that he saves up lots of revelations for you, and deals them out frequently . . . like discount tickets to return to a theme park. This quality first becomes clear at page 99, so keep going in the beginning if you are wondering why people have liked this book. The surprises come more frequently after that. So you will want to keep turning the pages.

As the story evolves, Mr. Baldacci also provides the reader with information that the FBI doesn't have so that you can appreciate the conflict more as it develops. You will know who did what and why long before the end of the book, but the resolution of the conflict will be interesting enough that you will want to continue to the end.

The book's weakness is that the writing could have been tightened up quite a bit. There are about 200 pages of extra material in this book that should have been edited out. One of the problems of becoming a best-selling author is that you get too much power over the editors, and the amount of editing declines. With proper editing, this book could have been one of the top thrillers of all time. Without the editing, a clever concept, interesting hero, and entertaining story are allowed to clank along awkwardly for long sections where neither character nor story development occur. Mr. Baldacci, less is sometimes more . . . especially in writing!

Why do you do the work that you do? What kind of family life do you want to have? If things aren't the way you would like them in your work or family life, why aren't you changing them?

Good start-struggle to finish
I wanted this book to match 'Absolute Power'. It failed. Started off quite well;expert anti-terrorist type cop flips at crucial moment causing death of colleagues. Was it really his fault? Well it takes an aweful long time to find out.Too long in my opinion. A dreary trail through a guilt trip on the part of the main character and all the dirty washing that can be thrown into the plot.By the time I got to the end I did not care-a relief to succeed in reaching the end.Shame!Maybe a film would make a go of this novel and cut out the dross.