Unwilling

A novel is not real life. We all know that, yet in the middle of a good novel we find ourselves engaged in the world of the novel as if it was our own, as if it were real. We may even enjoy the novel's world more than our own real world. We willingly suspend our disbelief to enjoy the novel's world. And sometimes not.That was the feeling I had as I completed Split Second.

    I began the book with high expectations. The author, David Baldacci, was someone my wife recommended. (She likes crime thrillers.) And the back of the book said Baldacci is the author of "fourteen consecutive New York Times and international  bestsellers." What could go wrong?

     Well, the plot for one.

    It started well, actually it started very well. Secret Service agent Michelle Maxwell is head of a detail guarding presidential candidate John Bruno. The candidate, who is on the campaign trail somewhere in rural America, demands they take a detour so that he can pay his respects to an old friend recently deceased whose body is at a really out in the boondocks funeral home.

     There are the usual bunch of innocuous-looking characters in  disguise hanging around the funeral home (which builds suspense), but agent Maxwell sees nothing threatening. She allows Bruno to view the body alone with the friend's widow.  Whereupon, Bruno is kidnapped.

     It sounds like an interesting story at this point. There are the appealing characters of agent Maxwell and former agent Sean King.  There are the ingenious bad guys. There is danger. There is a cliffhanger at the end of each chapter. And there are the usual smart, sharp shooters.

     That should have made for an engrossing and entertaining Christmas vacation read.  But it didn't. The plot was way too convoluted. The bad guy was unbelievable. And the author needed to repeatedly rely on deus ex machina to save the good guys and to advance the plot (like dropping a red herring into the middle of the action just to confuse the reader, two escaped convicts, who have otherwise no relationship to anything else going on.

     There is, of course, at the end the expected explanation of all the loose ends. as in most detective stories. There is the happy ending when the two unlikely but victorious sleuths walk off into the sunset hand in hand. But I found myself unsatisfied. I felt tricked. I entered the world of the novel and after 480 pages found it too unreal to believe. It was fun while it lasted, I guess, but I don't think I'll read another Baldacci novel.