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Split Second
by David Baldacci
Fast paced action from David Baldacci.
During the presidential election year of 1996 a third party candidate is assassinated during a campaign stop, and the assassin is then shot and killed by Secret Service agent Sean King. Jump ahead to the present— another third party candidate, under the care of a team headed by agent Michelle Maxwell, is kidnapped during a visit to a funeral home.
Now, King and Maxwell are drawn together because each has committed the chief error of a Secret Service agent, failing to protect the person they were assigned to guard. The beautiful agent Maxwell, the younger of the two, is a Georgetown graduate, an Olympic rower and a black belt in karate. King, who was eased out of the Secret Service, now has a successful law practice, who has built himself an impressive cabin, mostly with his own hands, on a lake in a scenic corner of Virginia—it did take him a few years. On a more human note King is a neatnik who complains about the disheveled state of Maxwell's van.
Soon it is clear that the two mishaps that brought King and Maxwell together are related. But how? Gruesome murders pile up. People aren't who or what them seem. A house blows up, and multiple kidnappings take place. To complicate things further and add additional sexual tension, another ex-agent, Joan Dillinger, who is an old flame of King's, shows up and says she has been hired to find the kidnapped candidate. King and Maxwell follow a twisting trail of clues, but have an irksome habit of making discoveries and then not telling anybody about them until it is almost too late. Sometimes, it seems they are collaborating with Baldacci to put off the ending of the book. But, hey, this isn't Tolstoy, it's a novel of intrigue and mystery, and there's plenty of each. The action moves along at a roller coaster pace. If the story is not quite as riveting as Baldacci's “Absolute Power,” “Split Second” does make an entertaining and suspenseful diversion. Read the book today, or wait a year or so for a film version likely to appear in a theater near you.
Title: Split Second
Author: David Baldacci
Publisher: Warner Books
ISBN: 0446530891
Review written by: William Keogan
Reviewer's Rating:8
Reader's Rating: 8.12
Reader's Votes: 8
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