The Whole Truth

The Whole Truth by David Baldacci

It seems like David Baldacci writes and releases books faster than I can read them.  This book was written only six years ago (as I write this), yet it seems every time I turn around he’s released a new best seller to add to his impressive collection.  Fortunately, saturation doesn’t have to equal mediocrity, and I continue to enjoy his political thrillers.  Some more than others, yet this one seemed one of the best.

It seems there’s an evil big spender out there that wants to start a world war.  Actually, a cold world war.  This evil guy isn’t too evil, he just wants to continue to add billions to his already obsessive wealth.  Fortunately (for him) this is much easier to accomplish with the World Wide Web, viral videos, and the ever increasing amount of yellow journalism designed to entertain rather than inform.  So there are some sinister plans being put into place to make our once arch enemy Russia look like, once again, the bad guy, so that tensions can begin anew.

We then meet a guy named Shaw.  No last name.  He was raised as an orphan, and now is unwillingly working as a heavy for the U.S. government.  Think of a bigger, bulkier, yet older James Bond with a lot of testosterone.  Apparently Shaw is being blackmailed by the government, so he has to keep doing the bidding of his boss, yet it’s obvious Shaw wants out.  Still, we get to witness Shaw at his baddest best as he takes down several terrorists, drug dealers, etc.

Then we also meet Katie James.  She’s a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, yet her brilliant career is well in her past because of this thing called alcohol.  She’s so far gone, that she’s  regulated to writing for the obituary page.  That’s basically the death of a journalist when they get those types of assignments.  Pardon the pun.

Somehow, these two paths cross, as we know they will, to provide us with our story.  Shaw and Katie become a good team.  The two of them are purely platonic (like Baldacci’s King and Maxwell), yet this is probably because of a detail within the story that I don’t want to reveal here.  Once the story is all neatly concluded, you get the feeling that Baldacci may resurrect this pair for future novels (I checked.  Yep.  There’s one more as of this writing).

Some may have a problem with the whole “Wars aren’t really real and they’re only started so countries can make a profit” line, but Baldacci keeps this thing pretty apolitical.  A good thing, keeping politics out of stories.  I wish more authors would do that.

A pretty predictable story, really, but unique enough to keep one interested.  I would put this one in the “thumbs up” column.