Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #180416 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-06
• Released on: 2007-06-25
• Binding: Hardcover
• 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

Synopsis
The new Baldacci reintroduces the main characters from Split Second and Hour Game - the novel that took Baldacci to another level in paperback in the UK. Sean King and Michelle Maxwell both bear the scars of their previous case. Michelle is in a psychiatric hospital after making a suicide attempt while Sean, down on his luck and desperately worried about his friend, accepts a PI job at Babbage Town - a hugely secret establishment where, it seems, corpses turn up more quickly than new codes can be encrypted by the genius mathematicians who are employed in the place ...While Michelle's psychiatrist determines the key to her deep depression lies in events suppressed during her childhood, Michelle uncovers something truly disturbing happening in the hospital pharmacy ...And with both the FBI and CIA making their presence felt in Babbage Town, Sean begins to wonder what really goes on there. But there is a place even more sinister close by, Camp Peary, where it is said CIA death squads train ...

Customer Reviews

(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.

not up to standard
Sometimes authors are tied into a set amount of books and then they struggle to complete the books in the time span allowed. This is how Simple Genius feels to me. I love David Baldacci's books (usually) but this was a huge and bitter disappointment. I found myself wondering all along whether Michelle's adventures would coincide with Sean's adventures, otherwise, what was the point of their being there, apart from having the unbelievable Horatio rushing to both their rescues? I found the names unfortunate, Viggie, for heaven's sake! and the coincidences fit for an Indiana Jones film. Sean needs a way out, and oh my, there just happens to be a forgotten ladder ... he needs something to tie someone up and oh my, there just happens to be cable hanging on an exterior wall of a hut, like that is going to happen ... he needs a change of clothes and oh my, there just happens to be a stash of clothes behind a bush, including conveniently a guard's uniform ... it was too much like that. No tension, no believability, if there is such an expression. If Mr Baldacci needs to have 2 separate threads in a book, he should do the reader the favour, the considerate favour at that, of combining them or at least joining them in some way and bringing one or other thread to a satisfying conclusion. Mr Baldacci admits to taking wild liberties with the place he set the book, he overlooked admitting to taking wild liberties with the reader's suspension of belief that everything that was so obviously contrived.
By way of complete contrast and because my mind needs something to regulate it after all those 'convenient' happenings, I am reading Bill Bryson, a breath of fresh air ...

How the mighty can fall....
This is the second Baldacci I've read recently and the deterioration in the quality of his writing over time is now very noticeable.

In this effort, which brings back former agents Sean and Michelle, now acting privately, he also introduces an unbelievably wild plot, albeit delivered with quite a lot of pace. But that's about it.

Coincidence upon coincidence and just so many hard to believe components really killed this book for me. I kept going to the finish but I am sure my groans were quite audible in the end.

In short, in my view, Baldacci is no longer producing well-constructed tales written with flair.