thrillers

This is a novel that defies you to put it down until you finish it. It is a lengthy but fast read. I thoroughly enjoyed Baldacci's ABSOLUTE POWER and the action here is no second banana. I highly recommend this book. You care about LuAnn and her crew and you ache to see the destruction of her chief nemesis. The character development of all of the characters is rich and believable. Baldacci has the knack of creating characters that you can easily visualize. The action is non-stop and you really don't care if the plot is a tiny bit flawed. After all this is fiction...very good fiction. Baldacci knows how to tell an intriguing tale.

LuAnn Tyler is a twenty-year-old mother with a two-year-old child living in rural Georgia. She is smart, she is beautiful and she is trapped in a relationship with the abusive and lazy father of her daughter. LuAnn is trying to make the best of a bad situation when fate enters into her life in the person of a mysterious stranger named Jackson or so he calls himself at their first meeting: a meeting she believes is a job interview but she soon learns it is a meeting that is dramatically going to change the rest of her life. Circumstances engineered in part by the mysterious Jackson conspire to persuade LuAnn to participate in a lottery fraud that allows her to win a hundred million dollars. The only thing LuAnn has to do is promise to leave the country and to let Jackson manage her winnings.

In LuAnn's forced sojourn she acquires an education, numerous skills and a pronounced degree of sophistication. For ten years LuAnn, her bodyguard Charlie and daughter Lisa move from place to place in Europe so as not to become a spectacle. Eventually however LuAnn wearies of her Bedouin existence and longs for home...no matter what the cost she plots her return. This, of course, promises to upset Jackson's intricate plan. Rather than allow that to happen Jackson plots his own intrigue to end the threat: a threat he views as having the potential of destroying him. The twists and turns on this rollercoaster ride should satisfy even the most cynical critic of this type of genre. Enjoy and hold on tight!

"The Winner" makes for compelling reading. But once you are through with the book, it is difficult to shrug off the feeling of having been cheated. It is for sure a sizzling read. You keep turning the pages, almost breathlessly wanting to know what happens next and that, after all, is what a good thriller should be. Except that in this case the plot ios so outrageous--one individual fixing the US government lottery--that you want to the ask sue the author for taking his readers for a ride. That Martin Riggs character and also Charlie are both utterly boring people, hanging around LuAnn Tyler like faithful poodles. LuAnn herself is an interesting creation. Committed to her daughter and wallowing in poverty and an absuive relationship and accepting an offer that few would refuse. Interesting enough woman. But the whole intrigue that she gets caught in, with all the close shaves and the coincidences, is so contrived that you can't really feel good about the book. But Baldacci, without resorting to explicit sex scenes, does create the portrait of a really leggy, sexy women. Just that kept me reading on!

David Baldacci set the bar high for himself with his first huge hit, ABSOLUTE POWER (which later became a movie starring Clint Eastwood). He also reaches that bar with this effort, THE WINNER. Combining a plot not previously explored in popular fiction with believable characters and great writing, Baldacci produces a book worthy of a future screenplay.

The heroine, LuAnn Tyler, is a young Southern woman who receives an offer she can't refuse...an offer to win millions of dollars in a lottery that is fixed. The offer is made by a mysterious man named Jackson. As the novel progresses, Jackson develops into one of the most brilliant, calculating antagonists of recent memory. The man seems unstoppable! LuAnn's bodyguard Charlie is a constantly important character as is Matt Riggs, who is thrust into LuAnn's life by random chance.

As the novel progresses, it thrives not only on the lottery scam but also LuAnn's love for her daughter and her desire to protect her at any cost...and it plays into the hands of the reader, making you ask yourself if YOU would make the same decisions and take the same risks as she had. This added element really adds to the reading experience.

All in all, this is Baldacci's best work since Absolute Power. Hopefully, the trend will continue in his future works.