THE WHOLE TRUTH
David Baldacci
Vision
Thriller
Hardcover: 9780446195973
Paperback: 9780446539685

• Read an Excerpt

David Baldacci has reached bestseller status over a dozen times since his debut in 1996 with ABSOLUTE POWER (shortly thereafter turned into a film of the same name starring Clint Eastwood). His genres have varied considerably: political thriller, crime thriller, autobiographical drama, even a Christmas story. With his latest novel, THE WHOLE TRUTH, Baldacci boldly steps into the arena of international thriller and may have created his most explosive and hard-hitting story to date.

The premise of THE WHOLE TRUTH involves three primary characters. The first is Nicolas Creel, a multi-billionaire who runs the defense company ARES Corporation. Current trouble in the Middle East has not been good for his business. He uses his near-bottomless resources to hire a PM (Perception Management) Firm by the name of Pender & Associates. Dick Pender and his team specialize in going beyond mere “spin doctoring” and actually succeed in placing false truths out in the public that have major impact. The false truth precipitated between the association of Creel and Pender is to put the Russian Empire in a negative light by condemning them as mass murderers. This is done via doctored news footage and the hiring of an actor to portray a Russian whistleblower named Konstantin, who is going public with these tales of atrocity.

The second character is known by just his last name, Shaw. Shaw works for an unnamed international intelligence agency that sends him on dangerous missions all over the world in an effort to thwart evil. Ready to “retire” from this line of work and finally marry his fiancée, Anna, Shaw begrudgingly accepts a few small assignments from Frank, his contact at the agency, and vows that they will be his last. Unfortunately, Anna works for a London company known as the Phoenix Group, which is used as a pawn in Creel’s truth-bending game. A team of supposed Russian hit men invade the Phoenix Group and kill everyone in the building --- including Anna. When Shaw learns of this, he re-ups with his agency and vows to find and destroy the people behind this massacre.

The third character is Katie James. James is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has been going through hard times stemming from the heavy guilt she carries over the death of the subject of one of her stories. As she tries to get back into the swing of things with her career, she steps directly into the Phoenix Group massacre after befriending both Shaw and his fiancée. James meets with a Polish immigrant who is allegedly the only survivor of the massacre, and he is the one who fingers the Russian government for the crime. What makes things worse is the fact that the Phoenix Group ends up being an organization tied to the government of China --- and they are not at all pleased with the unwarranted Russian attack.

Meanwhile, Creel is sitting back and benefiting from the global panic that he has created. As Russia and China begin to square off with each other, the ARES Corporation is selling trillions of dollars in defense weaponry to all the major countries on the planet. Creel is thrilled at the idea of bringing back the Cold War and seeing himself in the role of liberator by taking the focus off the Middle East and putting the world back into the days of nuclear-war threat. With the help of Pender & Associates, it appears this plan can do nothing but succeed and thereby cause the loss of many lives around the globe.

The thrilling part of this novel is the level of suspense Baldacci keeps up as he jumps between Shaw and James and the Creel/Pender alliance. The reader will turn the pages briskly as the inevitable meeting between these three characters will bring fireworks of unknown catastrophe. At times, THE WHOLE TRUTH has the feel of a James Bond adventure or one of Robert Ludlum’s Bourne novels. I have enjoyed everything Baldacci has done and hope that this is not the last time he ventures into the international thriller genre, or the last we see of his great protagonist, Shaw.

    --- Reviewed by Ray Palen

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