The Sixth Man

The Sixth Man - by David Baldacci

David Baldacci started off being one of my favorite authors.  Then, I read a few books by him that were sort of so-so, and a couple that I thought were flat out awful.  So this guy is definitely “hit or miss” for me these days.  Fortunately, this book was a hit.  A big hit.  Quite possibly my favorite Baldacci book I’ve read so far (I’m reading them all, more or less, in sequential order.)

This is a “King and Maxwell” book.  Sean King and Michelle Maxwell are a team of private investigators.  They’re both former Secret Service agents who “slipped”, so to speak, in the line of duty at different times years ago.  Their similar pasts allow them the bond to work well as a (mostly) platonic team.  This book finds them traveling to the state of Maine to meet an attorney who is currently defending an alleged murderer.  They find their attorney (a friend of King’s), but unfortunately, they find him dead, so it’s time to begin an investigation.  For reasons unknown at the time, they’re getting a lot of obstruction from the FBI.  Why?  Who exactly is this murderer, and why did the attorney friend want to meet with them?

We then meet the alleged killer who is currently serving time in a maximum security federal facility.  He’s a bit of an odd man who refuses to even communicate or acknowledge King and Maxwell when they meet.  Well, we then discover some secrets about this guy, named Edgar Roy.  It seems Roy used to work for the Federal Government.  He’s one of individuals who has an abnormal gift of a photographic memory.  It’s such an intense gift that the government employs him to stare at a huge wall of television monitors all day long that are broadcasting clandestine satellite broadcasts of terrorist organizations (what seems) non stop.  Edgar is so proficient, that he’s able to assimilate, digest, and decipher all of this information as soon as it’s pouring through his brain.  You would think the government would want to protect such an individual.  Even if he did commit the horrendous crime that he’s being accused, you wouldn’t be surprised if the government looked the other way, so to speak.

So there are a lot of unanswered questions, and King and Maxwell really have their work cut out for them.  Fortunately, Baldacci paces this book very well.  We meet just the right amount of characters, have just the right amount of sub plots going on, and have just the right amount of suspense throughout the story.  Baldacci usually breaks down his books into very short chapters.  They rarely last no more than five or six pages.  This is good since you never feel overwhelmed and always have a nice stopping place right around the corner.  He also somehow manages to make most of these endings to the chapters a bit of a cliffhanger.  So even though you CAN stop, you rarely want to put the book down.

One minor drawback to some of the other King and Maxwell books is that the author dives a bit too much into their psyche and backgrounds.  Baldacci has been known to stray from his main story so we can learn about some weird skeletons that these two have lurking in their closets.  There’s none of that here.  In fact, there’s rarely anything that happens that doesn’t pertain to the actual story (without giving away any spoilers, the LAST King and Maxwell book had quite a rememberable ending, and it could have really taken this story on a detour.  Fortunately, it doesn’t).  I highly recommend this one.