Rating: 
Summary: Baldacci Writes Another Bestseller
Review: With The Simple Truth, David Baldacci has written another book well worth reading. I just finished my galley copy. The story left me guessing until nearly the end. Throw together dead Supreme Court clerks, justices with axes to grind, and a military cover-up, and you get an explosive combination. Definitely a must read book.
Rating: 
Summary: A real page turner - one day read - Best DB novel yet!
Review: Best suspense novel I've read this year! Provides readers with a basic understanding of the Supreme Court's task and objective without burdening the reader with technical info (Total Control was too technical to be enjoyable). Absolute Power and The Winner engrossed me, but David Baldacci has proved with this novel, Simple Truth, that he can write with the best: maybe even better!
Rating: 
Summary: Painful to read
Review: I have enjoyed Baldacci's work before but this book was simply awful. I couldn't believe any of the characters and the storyline was terrible. I was very surprised to get such stilted writing from Baldacci. You can miss this one in my opinion.
Rating: 
Summary: The Simple Truth Hurts
Review: Cliche, formulaic, predictable, and mildly entertaining at best.
This is the only Baldacci novel I've read. It is what it is--a throwaway dime store detective novel. Good reading for the plane or the inside of a hotel room, but don't look for any life-changing catharsis or even an indulgent late night to finish just one more chapter. Or even one more paragraph.
The story at times is interesting and the characters, though nauseatingly melodramatic, are usually believable overall. A lame love story surges through the sub-plot, as seemingly required by all novels authored by men writing in this genre. The dialogue borders on the ridiculous, but Baldacci does a pretty decent job of steering clear of overly exposistional conversation between characters. The female lead is, of course, completely one-dimensional in comparison to her male counterparts, willing to give up everything simply to assist her one true love (at first site, mind you) in whatever he may need. Vomitous.
Although Baldacci "hides the ball" in terms of plot development, presumably as an attempt to build suspense, I was pretty certain how things would turn out about 200 pages prior to the conclusion. In fact, within a hundred pages of the finale, I basically just stopped caring.
Rating:
Summary: Painful to read
Review: I have enjoyed Baldacci's work before but this book was simply awful. I couldn't believe any of the characters and the storyline was terrible. I was very surprised to get such stilted writing from Baldacci. You can miss this one in my opinion.
Rating:
Summary: Good characters and plot, but novel fails to deliver
Review: Baldacci has created a great plot about a death row inmate who is actually innocent who escapes from jail and is aided by a Supreme Court clerk and her dead boyfriend's brother. All of the main characters are interesting and have great depth. Yet the background characters are confusing and the action scenes are boring. Baldacci was unable to combine the characters and plot into a good story.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but not his best
Review: This book is typical popular fiction. It is exciting and suspenseful. Baldacci keeps you turning the pages, and the setting of the Supreme Court is intriguing. While the author keeps you interested, in the end, you might feel it lacks a certain something. The conspiracy theory aspect is not really used in a new or creative way. The charcters are fun to follow, but also predictable and seem to lack depth and development. If you are looking for a deep read - this isn't it. But if you enjoy Baldacci or popular fiction, then this book has what you are looking for. This isn't Baldacci's best, but it is worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: Quite dissapointing
Review: This is my third Baldacci book and none have been as good as I'd hope. The Simple Truth is like no other book I've read. The plot kept my interest all the way to the end, and all of the characters were well defined with distict personalities. Yet this novel had many deficiencies. Baldacci failed to combine the plot and characters into an exciting story. Rufus Harms files an appeal with the Supreme Court stating his innocence. Brother of slain court clerk John Fiske and clerk Sara Evans race to find out what really happened to Harms while being pursued by several people, some friend, some foe. The action scenes were horribly done, I often skipped over them. During the final shootout, characters appeared out of nowhere just to advance the plot. The flow of the story was non existant. Baldacci did a horrible job of putting a time frame into the story. I just finished reading and I have no idea of the action in the book lasted two days or two weeks. It seems like the events just ran together with no time of day ever given as reference. All of Baldacci's books sound good based on the plot, but The Simple Truth fails to deliver an exciting story.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining and suspenseful Grishamesque legal thriller!
Review: "Truth" was our first novel by Baldacci, and a pleasant surprise indeed. From first learning that a long-imprisoned military convict is probably innocent of a young girl's murder, to the series of deaths the investigation into these old events precipitates, we can hardly wait to see what will happen next, not to mention "whodunit"! Supreme Court law clerk Michael Fiske gets in over his head when he begins to pursue the truth in the prisoner's claims (fearing the celebrities that might get involved) before officially filing the appeal with the Court. He soon pays for that mistake with his life; and we know then a real conspiracy is on. Mike's brother John, an ex-cop and young lawyer himself, together with Mike's ex-girlfriend Sara, another law clerk, who takes an immediate romantic interest in John, pursue the bad guys with a vengeance. Whether much of that pursuit is realistic or not, being mostly outside the scope of the official police investigation of the murder(s) is about our only quibble with the tale. The story not only weaves an entertaining, complex plot but also provides illuminating glimpses into the machinations and incredible internal politics of the Supreme Court. That weighty issues might appear or disappear due to personal influence, or even just the judgment of twenty-year-old "clerks" (really, young lawyers), gave us more than a few moments pause. Baldacci reveals that he also knows how to drop just the right number of clues, along with a few red herrings, to keep us beguiled until nearly the final page. This book not only goes up on the shelf right next to "Pelican Brief", but leaves us anxious to try some more novels by this fine author!
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining and a quick read
Review: In Simple Truth, Baldacci gives us another of his action-oriented mysteries in which innocent people are unknowingly caught up in events over which they have no control. When Michael Fisk, a Supreme Court clerk opens and reads a new filing, he finds himself in the midst of events which actually started 25 years earlier when a young girl was brutally murdered by Rufus Harms, now a prisoner at Fort Jackson in Virginia. Although Harms confessed, and in the beginning of the story we are told how repentant he is, the crime is not as simple as it seems at first. The story begins when Harms receives a letter from the Army, smuggled to him by his brother Josh. Rufus contacts the lawyer who defended him 25 years ago and through him files an appeal with the Supreme Court, based on the facts in the letter, which is the filing Micheal Fisk sees. He takes the papers to Ft. Jackson prison to ask Rufus about it. Soon after he leaves the prison, Michael is found dead. When Michael's brother John learns of his brother's death, he goes to Washington to identify the body and try to tie up his brother's affairs. He immediately gets the sense that the crime was not a random robbery at all, a feeling shared by Detective Chandler who is investigating the crime. Within a short time, John meets, among others, an FBI agent named McKenna, several of the justices on the Supreme Court, the chief of police for the court -- and Sara, another court clerk and friend of Michael's. Before any progress can be made in the investigation, another clerk is found murdered. More complications occur and questions are raised. Did John kills his brother for the half a million dollar insurance policy? What does Justice Knight have to do with it all? Is McKenna out to railroad John Fisk? And what is the secret information in the letter sent to Rufus Harms? The questions are all answered in the exciting end and Baldacci has wrapped it all up once again.
|
