First Family

Starred review from March 30, 2009
Plenty of intense action drives bestseller Baldacci's stellar fourth novel to feature former Secret Service agents Michelle Maxwell and Sean King (after Simple Genius
). Maxwell and King, D.C. PIs, step on the toes of everyone, including the FBI and the Secret Service. They even manage to bruise the ego of First Lady Jane Cox, who hires them after her 12-year-old niece is kidnapped following a birthday party at Camp David. Baldacci excels at making the improbable believable as one obsessed man, 62-year-old Sam Quarry, takes on the best security the U.S. can muster from his Alabama redoubt. Even more impressive than Quarry's determined campaign is the ingeniousness with which Baldacci manages to disguise both Quarry's precise motivation and aims. Meanwhile, Maxwell has to deal with her mother's death and a host of other personal issues. Baldacci's careful plotting and confidant depictions of national security procedures make this a thinking man's thriller.

April 15, 2009
The latest Sean KingMichelle Maxwell thriller is pretty much a guaranteed best-seller. The story begins soon after a young girls birthday party. The girl, who happens to be the First Ladys niece, is abducted from her home, and her mother is murdered. Much to the consternation of the Secret Service and the FBI, the First Lady hires Sean and Michelle (who are former Secret Service agents themselves) to find out whos behind the abduction and discover why the kidnappers apparently siphoned off some of the girls mothers blood and took that with them, too. Sean and Michelle, surely one of the more interesting teams of private investigators (especially since Michelle is now dealing with some very nasty personal demons), are baffled to learn that the girls abduction has connections to an old Alabama plantation and its wealthy but distinctly off-putting and possibly deranged owner. Baldacci has come quite a long way from his early thrillers, such as Absolute Power (1996) andTotal Control (1997). Hes a more subtle writer now, able to tell stories of deep moral ambiguity and to create characters who balance on the line between hero and villain. His whimsy and satire, highly evident in the Camel Club novels, are appropriately scaled back here: this is a more serious novelmore frightening and certainly more shocking. It will be fascinating to watch where he takes these two heroes from here.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)