Fiction

59

Baldacci burst on the thriller scene with Absolute Power (1995), which stayed on the New York Times best-seller list for more than four months. Total Control is even more suspenseful, and it is also far more interesting in terms of the questions it raises about how much technology controls us. Baldacci’s ruthless characters wield the latest in action weaponry, laptops, and cell phones. Everyone still carries guns, but they’re fighting over computer disks and trying to outsmart each other with frantically typed e-mail. Except for a sabotaged airliner that hits the ground with enough impact to practically disintegrate, creating a huge crater in rural Virginia and killing a couple of hundred innocent people, and a bunch of vicious murders, all the crime is online, involving the stealing of top-secret financial documents pertaining to high-tech companies with names such as Triton and CyberCom. Baldacci’s heroes are also a mix of the old and the new: a bighearted FBI guy and a beautiful, high-powered attorney who really just wants to stay home and take care of the kids. Maybe so, but when her husband disappears, Sidney Archer transforms herself from corporate deal-maker into a gun-toting momma with a sure shot and enough smarts to outmaneuver her very angry, very evil assailants. Good and slick.

2018-06-26 15:51:06