These days, it seems it's becoming more and more difficult to find a book that truly takes you by surprise. One which takes your expectations and then proceeds to completely blow them out of the water. I'll be completely frank; I absolutely loved The Innocent. David Baldacci set out to create an edge of your seat thriller and completely succeeded in every key area.
The story follows Will Robie, an American covert assassin who knows how to get the job done. His life takes a surprising turn for the worse when his next target is actually an innocent victim. Upon refusing, he's targeted by people within his own organization and soon meets up with a fourteen year old girl, Julie, who's on the run for her own reasons. Their fates soon become intertwined as they find themselves in the middle of a grand conspiracy buried deep into the very heart of the American government.
I've never heard of David Baldacci until now but his reputation clearly precedes him, the man knows how to make a great thriller. The book has a terrific plot; it's so exquisitely devised in such a manner that you can't help but marvel at the ingenuity that went into its creation. As the story begins to hit its stride early on, the reader soon finds themself consumed in a maelstrom of lies and deception. Seemingly no one can be trusted, and each frequent twist or clue adds even more depth to the overarching narrative. Eventually, everything that you believe is concrete, Baldacci takes and completely shatters into something else. These various revelations and surprises interwoven into the plot will keep you guessing to the very end and clamoring for just one more chapter. It's a story that's easy to comprehend yet so satisfyingly complex in its execution. It's also worth mentioning that Baldacci uses the tried and true `short chapter' format for his prose in order to keep the pace at an all-time high. This writing technique is a rather risky double-edged sword. It can either create the sensation of speed, adding weight to the intensity of the storytelling, thus creating urgency. Or it can fall right on its face and seem like a cheap gimmick used to create the facade of a fast-paced book. Fortunately, The Innocent falls into the former than the latter. With this dichotomy of adrenaline-filled pacing and a brilliantly satisfying plot, Baldacci is able to create the most important element of a proper thriller: suspense. The sense of discovering what's to come, who's behind it, and their real ultimatum is so intoxicatingly entertaining that it's easy to lose yourself among the pages.
Even with such an engrossing premise and pacing, a book cannot possibly be entertaining if the characters aren't interesting, nor if the reader isn't given a reason to care about their predicament. Again, Baldacci nails it, the characters he's illustrated are not only interesting; they're probably the best I've ever seen from a techno-thriller. As much as I love characters that feature a James Bond esque persona, it's definitely a nice change of pace to find one that's written in a strikingly believable manner. As I said, Will Robie is at his core, a professional killer that works for the United States government. His profession has left his life without a sense of passion or hope, an almost complete disconnect from the world and the people that live in it. His stoic personality may be seen as a shortcoming too some people, but I found him too be sympathetic and surprisingly realistic. In reality, a killer isn't going to have a roguish charm that appeals to people, but rather an anti-social personality with a cold demeanor on reality and death that pushes others away.
The other main character, Julie, is a gifted child with the burden of having to grow up too fast. While she requires the aid of Robie in order to survive her assailants, she never feels like an annoying addition too the book. She's street-smart and intelligent enough that she actually contributes to the plot rather than feeling like a burden. Here presence also adds a much needed dose of humor to what is an otherwise very stoic genre of military caricatures and stereotypes. Yet it's the relationship between these two characters that really showcases Baldacci's knack for strong characterization. With his skillset, Robie acts as the guardian for Julie, while she brings out the humanism locked within him, giving him the honorable task of protecting someone other than himself. It's very endearing, and it's punctuated even more by very amusing dialogue between the two. The book also doesn't rely on an oversized cast of personas to fill its ranks, but rather focuses on a small cast of characters with each one leaving a strong impression.
When comparing this book to other techno-thrillers and why I believe it's vastly superior to the majority of the market, I'd describe the approach the author took as "streamlined." David Baldacci doesn't fall into the pit trap that I've seen from my personal experience of reading techno-thrillers. He's not using this novel as an excuse to show off his vast knowledge of military equipment and tactics, or our country's political structure. He just wanted to create an exciting novel set in modern-day America with a light dose of politics to create the backdrop. Will Robie works for the government and kills bad guys, that's all you need to comprehend. It's simplistic, it's easy to get into, and it works. The rest is common knowledge that any U.S. citizen would easily understand.
I hate to describe something as "perfect", but I literally cannot find a single flaw with The Innocent. It's a masterfully plotted thriller with excellent characterization, a well-conceived plot, and the suspense is literally non-stop. It's so fast and exciting that you'll be hard pressed to find a more entertaining book anywhere. I'm definitely looking forward to reading the rest of David Baldacci's work.
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Popular Highlights in this book
You had to take life as it came. It gave no quarter, spared no feelings. Limited no pain. Put no ceiling on happiness.Highlighted by 649 Kindle readers- “There’s always more to life than money, Will,” she said. “Money is just a means to an end. It shouldn’t be the goal.”Highlighted by 450 Kindle readers
- Shane Connors had terminated nearly thirty percent more targets than Robie had in the same amount of time.Highlighted by 423 Kindle readers
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