Stone Cold

Stone Cold by David Baldacci

One of Baldacci’s “Camel Club” books.  From what I can tell based on this author’s work, he has a couple of recurring people in several of his books – one being the “King and Maxwell” characters, and the other being the band of four eclectic, somewhat bizarre individuals that call themselves The Camel Club.  Oliver Stone (not his real name) is their leader.  They live in Washington D.C. and spend many long days and nights uncovering conspiracy theories and undermining secret government plots.  It seems as though Oliver Stone at one point actually worked for the CIA, and was superb in what he did (killings, clandestine activity, etc.), but one day, he decided he wanted out.  Well, this type of CIA job isn’t one that you just walk away from, so the powers that be decide to kill him.  Oh, our rotten government!  Only he doesn’t die – yet everyone in the know thinks he is.  Oliver Stone is born.

The Camel Club is not the type of “club” that serious people would pay attention.  They’re kind of a ratty, disheveled bunch that would appear more at home holding up “Spare Change?” signs at a traffic intersection as opposed to duping the U.S. Government.  There’s sort of an unofficial fifth member of this club named Annabelle Conroy.  I think she may have been introduced in the second Camel Club book (The Collectors – I haven’t read it yet).  She’s a con artist and has just conned a member of the mob who owns a casino in Atlantic City out of 40 million dollars.  This guy makes John Gotti look like an altar boy.  So he’s after her, and she turns to the Camel Club for help.

Ironically, this isn’t really even the main plot to the story.  There’s this other narrative going on involving a thirty-ish ex-Navy Seal named Harry Finn.  Finn has one of those really cool jobs – he works for Homeland Security and tests the nation’s safety mechanisms (example – he gets to break through airport security, stowaway on a major airliner, and plant a “fake” bomb on the plane).  Finn is also a big family man.  He has a beautiful wife, 3 beautiful kids, and Baldacci never lets us forget this.  This is so you know he’s one of the “good” guys.  Even though he starts getting involved in some shady shenanigans, you have to therefore keep “rooting” for him.

So all of these different, unrelated narratives end up meeting about ¾ of the way through the book.  At this point, we now seem to figure out what all of the background to all these stories is, and we piece things together.  Although, to be honest, I thought the con artist and the Vegas bad boy was a bit thrown in and not really related to anything in general.  It’s almost as if Baldacci tried to make that part a “self-standing” novel, yet couldn’t flesh it out, so he throws it in this story as a sub plot.

My only other complaint about the book (and this seems to be prevalent in most of this author’s work) is that the characters seem to quickly find answers to questions that seem as though, in real life, would require a lot more digging.  Every time someone needs a bit of “important information”, it just so happens that the next stranger they run into can tell them exactly what they need and more.  There’s also a couple of scenes where the good guys seem to get out of unpleasant scenes very easily.  (Note to bad guys everywhere – if you kidnap someone and are driving them somewhere, you may want to at least handcuff them, or tie their hands behind their back).

Still, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.  I would recommend, however, reading the first two Camel Club books before tackling this one.  You never feel “lost”, but some of the linear backgrounds of the characters can be a bit bewildering if this is the first time you meet the characters.  I also enjoyed the fact that the chapters in the book (99 total) are very brief – about four pages on average, so the book moves quickly as well.  Strangely, this is exactly what some other readers complained about when they reviewed this book.

Oh well, you can’t please everybody.