First Family

First Family – by David Baldacci

This is probably my favorite Baldacci book so far (I’m reading them sequentially).  I’m a bit surprised as I seem to prefer his “Camel Club” offerings as opposed to the “King and Maxwell” episodes, which is what this one is.  Sean King and Michelle Maxwell are your typical crime solving duo.  Both single, both incredibly attractive, yet the relationship is purely platonic so we can focus on action without too many distractions.  Since they’re based in the Washington D.C. area, many of their crime solving adventures involve high level officials within the powerful corridors of the government.

This one is no different.  It seems the President’s 12 year old niece has been kidnapped.  The action just so happens as Maxwell and King are on their way to visit the immediate family, so they witness the event actually happen to some extent.  It seems as though Sean King is quite friendly with the family, and has been friends with the First Lady as well for quite some time.  So in addition to King and Maxwell being at the scene of the crime as it is being committed, FLOTUS also insists that the duo be assigned to the case.

We then meet Sam Quarry, the individual responsible for the kidnapping.  Baldacci spends a lot of time with Sam, and the more we know him, the more we become convinced that the man isn’t necessarily a deranged lunatic.  It seems like he has a very clear motive for his crime, yet the author doesn’t let us know exactly what it is until near the end of the story.  Instead, Baldacci masterfully peels back layer upon layer of Quarry’s motivation.  No, we never cheer for the guy, but we come to understand why he did what he did.  This, for me, was probably the most appealing part of the story.  I always looked forward when the story would come back to Sam, so I could add one more piece to a complex puzzle of understanding.

In the King and Maxwell books, David Baldacci dives a bit deeper into these two characters, and what exactly it is that makes them tick.  It seems as though, especially with Michelle Maxwell, there are a lot of skeletons in her past, and they’re so severe, that her subconscious has mostly blacked them out of her memory.  So we revisit her past from time to time.  In this book, her mother dies in an accident during the investigation, which causes her to go home to attend the funeral, etc. and there’s a LOT of time spent on digging up old ghosts.  It is quite the distraction from the main story, yet I never really felt as though the diversion was unnecessary nor too lengthy.  That might be a motivation to read these books in order, but if one doesn’t, it’s probably not that big of a deal.

I also enjoyed the somewhat of a cliffhanger ending quite well, and it makes me anxious to see how the next book plays out.