Rating: 
Summary: A little long
Review: I have been a fan of David Baldacci for the past two years. I enjoy reading his books normally. For some reason I felt like I was never going to finish the book and then I felt let down with the ending. After following the trail across the country I guess I was hoping for a happier ending.
Rating: 
Summary: Would make a good movie
Review: Good plot, lots of twists and turns,likeable heroine(albeit pretty dumb for an attorney)and if you skip all the extraneous detail about the computer programs, it moves along quickly.Would make an exciting and pacy movie.
Rating: 
Summary: Needs more editing
Review: This book had the good story line, but the details were not there to support the plot. Suspense is not having the main character running around like a loose cannon never seeing farther than the end of her nose. I can't think what parts irritated me more, but the total incompetence of Sidney at times playing into the hands of the "bad guys" didn't cut it with me.
Rating: 
Summary: Another great Baldachi
Review: Once again Baldachi's story captures you from the first page and doesn't let you go untill the very last page. His use of charachters is artistic and they pull the plot to various directions without you being prepared. Until the end nobody knows what's going on with Jason, if he's behind the all thing or just a poor victim. I wish there will be more and more books like that one.
Rating:
Summary: From Absolute Power to Absolutely Unreadable
Review: Absolute Power was a great fun thriller. Baldacci had all the makings of a John Grisham contender. It was a great success, so of course, the publishing company coerced another book out of him as quickly as possible; and it's obvious!It is contrived and ludicrous, with feeble (and almost embarrassing) attempts at integrating computer technology a la Tom Clancy. Furthermore, the main character is Not the wily lawyer as in his first novel (and most Grisham tales), but the inept wife who must travel all over the lands to save her kidnapped husband. Most of the writing seems painfully forced, and it was all I could do to finish the dreadful monotony, in hopes that it could get better. Needless to say, I haven't read subsequent novels, which, I realise, may have been written better, considering, perhaps, more lenient deadlines. But I won't do it. Not again. Yes, I am disenchanted with Mr. Baldacci's writing. But don't take my word for it. Afterall, you need something to read in the airport. On second thought, you're better off waiting and reading the onflight magazine. In the infamous words of Charlie Brown, "Arrrrrgggh!"
Rating:
Summary: Big Letdown
Review: The book was interesting, but to do all that reading and be let down at the end...Very disapointing.
Rating:
Summary: Too Unrealistic
Review: This is one of those books that I simply didn't like but was compelled to continue reading to the end. It is one of those books where the heroine, Sidney Archer, tries to unravel a mystery even though she will probably end up dead. (in real life anyone that does what she does would have been dead about 50 times. She just seems to have "Indiana Jones" luck for getting out of dangerous situations). Any sane person in the same position would probably quit their search at the beginning. That is why I feel the book was unrealistic. Other things that make it unrealistic is that as Sidney's saga moves on she all of a sudden becomes like The Girl from U.N.C.L.E in her resourcefulness and her ability to shoot a gun. There is also no real explanation why an FBI agent helps her even though he believes her to be guilty. A woman's charm can only go so far. There is also a part of the book where a "crack" investigator is meeting with her. You think that he is going to be the big hero of the book, but he is immediately knifed in the back. This was an interesting plot twist (kind of like Janet Leigh being killed off early in the Psycho movie). The ending of the book disappointed me. (I don't want to say too much because it would be a spoiler to those who haven't read the book). I felt that it was unrealistic too.
Rating:
Summary: Partial Control of the Subject Matter
Review: Baldacci sticks to his proven suspense-thriller formula, but doesn't fill the pages with characters that are believable or make you care about them. Not bad, but certainly not his best work.
Rating:
Summary: Cliched, hackneyed, yawn inducing pot boiler.
Review: This book is just like any other John Grisham or Patricia Cornball pot boiler. It is pulp fiction of the lowest order. All the characters are cardboard cut-outs: the FBI are big, tough guys who wear sunglasses in the dark and indoors; CEOs fly around in Lear Jets killing people; lawyers also fly around in Lear Jets and act unlike any lawyer in history; and assassins kill expertly until it comes to the heroine who they just can't seem to kill (mmm, wonder why). Baldacci is one of those authors who has clearly done a lot of research, but he feels he needs to include all this research into the novel, even if it is boring, trite and unnecessary - which it always is. As an example we are treated to pages and pages of boring guff about the Federal Bank and how it effectively controls the lifes of all Americans. It is just a longwinded section of exposition that gets us nowhere. Even worse is the long explanation about how computers give off radiation and how images on monitors are made up of pixels. Wow! And this is all introduced at a time when the heroine is desperate to download some info from a disc and does not need to have this explained, so why the pages of exposition? I can only think it's to slow down the already turgid narrative and to pad out the book further. The ending is also one long stream of exposition as our macho FBI agent tells us the reader, via one of the baddies, the whole convoluted plot. It takes pages and pages to spell out the plot I had been trying to follow. ...I couldn't really care about any of the characters in this as they were so paper thin - the FBI hero, Lee Sawyer, is so cliched even down to the sleeping problems, divorced wife, children who hate him, dark sunglasses worn at night, etc etc etc. Yawn! I also objected to the way the husband character disappears from the story never to be mentioned again apart from when his death is raised at the end. If this was to be made into a film it wouldn't break new ground, it would be just as bog-standard as all the other mainstream Hollywood thrillers based on books like The Firm and The Pelican Brief. Let's hope it never sees the light of day.
Rating: 
Summary: Real Disappointment
Review: Don't you just hate in the slasher movies where the teenage girl is being chased out the front door by some guy in a hockey mask wielding a cleaver and instead of running toward the potential safety of neighbors, she runs around the house into the dark, secluded woods. That's exactly how I felt reading this book. The main character just keeps making terrible choices that kept me wincing through the whole book. I'm not a stickler for believability in a book like this, but I hate when a supposedly intelligent lawyer, wife and mom makes absurd choices one after another. I'm not sure why I finished reading this book except to say that it held my attention just enough to keep me reading to the end. And see how many times Sidney, the main character, has "tears streaming down her face". I lost count. You probably want to pass on this book.
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