Hell's Corner

Hell’s Corner – by David Baldacci

Lately, whenever I pick up a book by David Baldacci, there’s a bit of fear and trepidation within me.  It seems, in my judgment, that this author clearly qualifies as a “hit or miss” author.  Some of his books are very enjoyable, yet some, quite frankly, stink.  Sadly, this book tends to lean towards the latter.  It’s not as bad as “True Blue” and nowhere NEAR as awful as “The Christmas Train” (fortunately, not much is), yet I’m sad to report that this book does get a solid “thumbs down” from me.

I was actually quite pleased when I first picked this book up and discovered it was part of “The Camel Club” series.  Before I read this book, I really enjoyed every one of the books in that series, so expectations were quite high.  Sadly, it didn’t take long before I realized that this book was probably going to be a clunker, and by the end, my sentiments didn’t change at all.

Camel Club “leader” Oliver Stone is summoned by none other than (gasp!) the President of the United States!  Why?  It seems as though there is some sort of Russian drug operation that is trying to filter its way into the U.S. via Mexico, and Oliver Stone is asked to go over and spy on the Russians.  Let’s dismiss the fact that, in real life, vagrant Stone who works as a caretaker for a cemetery, probably should not be The Commander in Chief’s first choice.  But never mind.  If you know The Camel Club and you know Oliver Stone, you know that this has the potential to be a great story.

Except it never happens.  Never.  Baldacci has been guilty of this in the past.  It’s almost as if he changes his mind about the plot after the first few chapters and decides to write an entirely different book, yet leaves the first few chapters intact.  Not good.

So then we come to our second (and much inferior) plot.  Oliver Stone is walking through Lafayette Park late at night.  This place is directly across the street from the White House (and is a real place).  You would think a place so close to the President’s residence would have air tight security, but I guess not.  While at the park, Stone observes four different people, each in a different corner of the park, doing strange things.  Why are these people so noticeable?  Why are there only four people in the entire park?  Don’t they see this guy observing them?  Again, I guess not.  Well, the next thing we know, shots are being fired, a bomb goes off in the park (apparently destroying the centerpiece statue of Andrew Jackson), and one of the four persons is killed.

So Oliver Stone springs into action.  They only clue we have is that the British Prime Minister was “supposed to” walk through the park later that night, so maybe the mayhem was supposed to be directed at him?  So we get a female MI6 agent to accompany Stone throughout his investigation.  Since she’s British, Baldacci fills her dialog with numerous instances of words such as “blimey”, “bloke”, and “bloody hell” with annoying frequency.  As Stone and his companion (I forget her name) pursue this investigation, we discover all sorts of road blocks.  Apparently, NOTHING is as it seems and there are so many clandestine operatives within this mess, it makes your head spin.  Every good guy, it seems, turns out to be a bad guy, every trustworthy agency that’s supposed to protect and defend seems to have different motives altogether, and nobody, it seems, can be trusted.  To Oliver Stone, this really isn’t anything new.  To the reader, it just comes across as pointless and mundane.  Baldacci has done better.

While I’m complaining, I’ll also vent that this really is NOT a “Camel Club” book, but an “Oliver Stone” book.  The other members of the Camel Club (and the cast changes a bit from book to book) don’t really serve much purpose here, and they’re pushed way in the back as minor players.  They also seem as bumbling members of the Keystone Kops as opposed to being helpful in any significant way.

I simply didn’t care how this book ended.  I was more anxious to finish it for the sake of finishing it as opposed to wanting to know who was really doing what, and what the whole point of the story really was.  If you happened to have read this book and are reading this review, you might be thinking that I’ve gotten a few points of the story wrong, and you would be right.  Again, I simply didn’t care.  I also think that the plot may have had something to do with “nanobots”.  Whatever.