Zero Day

Zero Day - by David Baldacci

There are many authors that base their literary career around a particular character.  Think of James Patterson’s Alex Cross or Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone.  David Baldacci, however, has several different books that feature several different sets of recurring characters.  His most famous ones are the King and Maxwell books, and the Camel Club books.  It shouldn’t surprise anyone, when he keeps introducing new recurring characters into the fold.  This book was his first to feature John Puller.

Who is John Puller?  He’s an ex-military “special agent”.  I would guess he’s in his mid 30s.  Tough guy, yet quiet.  Rarely smiles, but an overall good guy.  Sleeps very little, and drinks a lot of coffee.  Single, mainly because he really doesn’t have time for romance.  And very good at what he does – both from the physical perspective and the mental.

When a military colonel and his family are killed in rural West Virginia, Puller is called into investigate.  The town in West Virginia is right out of a John Grisham novel.  The main industry there is the coal industry.  So the only jobs there are mining coal, so everyone is poor, destitute and dying from some sort of coal “disease” (so it seems).  Puller teams up with the head of the police department, Samantha Cole, to investigate these killings.  Of course, during the investigation, many more things go wrong.  It seems as though someone is trying to put a stop to Puller’s investigation, and they obviously have quite a bit of muscle to accomplish some of the things that they implement to try to get rid of the guy.

I really enjoyed this book.  Baldacci has been hit or miss with me throughout his career.  He rivals Stephen King as someone that can write a brilliant book, and then follow it up with one that is absolutely dreadful.  Like King, this cycle goes back and forth, so you never really know if you’ll be safe when you pick up a new book.  So I was relieved that this book was so entertaining.  You could make the argument that it got a bit unrealistic about halfway through, but I was never bored, and I found the whole story to make sense despite all of the twists and turns.  Baldacci is also famous for writing “short” chapters.  I seem to remember the average chapter length to be about four pages in length.  Some don’t like this, but I enjoy it as it’s easy to come to a stopping point when you’re ready to stop reading for a while.  A lot of his chapter endings could be considered as minor “cliffhangers” as well.

Looking forward to the next John Puller story.