Split Second

Split Second by David Baldacci

For fans of David Baldacci’s “King and Maxwell” series, this is the first one where we meet the couple.  We start our story eight years in the past.  Sean King is a secret service agent guarding a presidential candidate.  During a speech where king is guarding his boss, the unthinkable happens - an assassin kills the presidential hopeful with one bullet.  Although King  returns the favor and knocks the assassin out with a bullet of his own, he’s basically too late.  Sadly, if you’re a secret service agent and the guy you’re protecting goes down, your career is basically over.

Flash forward to the present day.  There’s another scenario with another secret service agent (that would be Michelle Maxwell) guarding another presidential hopeful.  Like King, she makes an innocent “slip” and her “assignment” is kidnapped.  So she’s finished as well.  Fortunately, King has picked up as life and is doing pretty well, yet there are a series of mysterious murders that are popping up with his acquaintances being the targets.  Since the latest presidential hopeful is a kidnapping, it provides an opportunity for these two washed out secret service agents to meet each other and join forces to bring some sort of redemption for themselves and their careers.

Although these two characters are described as flawless specimens of beauty, their relationship remains purely platonic.  They work very well as a team, and with the help of a huge supporting cast of characters, the hunt is on.  I should say “an extremely” huge supporting cast of characters.  I found this to be a bit of a drawback, as my brain was constantly having to shuffle all of these individuals in my head - trying to remember who is who.  This is one of those books where we “meet” the bad guys as well, but Baldacci keeps their identities as a mystery as well as their motivations, so this keeps up the curiosity factor.

Everything pretty much goes as you would expect it to in a story such as this.  We see our heroes’ make slow progress as they interview people, discover clues, investigate locations etc.  When the bad guys are finally revealed during the climax, I found it a bit weak and out of character.  True, we’ve only met these shadowy figures sparingly, but when we discover the true motivation and purposes of the so-called showdown, it comes across as a bit too fantastic and somewhat silly.

I enjoyed this book overall.  It’s fun to match wits with the two heroes, and anytime we meet new characters within the pages, you simply know that although they may seem inconsequential to the plot of the story, the author spends so much time with them, that you simply know that we haven’t seen the end of them.  There were a few times where coincidences and fate seemed placed a bit conveniently within the story, but it was mostly a fun ride.