New Book Review From the Entertainment Critic: The Whole Truth by David Baldacci

THE WHOLE TRUTH

THE ENTERTAINMENT CRITIC BOOK REVIEW, BY JAMES MYERS

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            The versatile David Baldacci is back with his new political thriller, The Whole Truth.  This novel asks a unique question:  What if the entire world, governments, leaders, and citizens around the globe were united on a crusade to stop an evil that doesn’t exist, was completely fabricated, and promulgated in a savvy public relations ploy through mass communications and the Internet.  In his 15^th legal thriller, Baldacci asks, how would we respond to an imaginary global crisis?  Baldacci has elected to take us one step beyond 1984, by giving us a look behind the curtain at the wizard himself.

            Nicholas Creed, owner and operator of the Ayres Corporation, is a billionaire military weapons manufacturer who has no boundaries for his ambitions. Creed wants to restructure the world in his own image, and he has the wealth, power and knowledge to do it.  He can control world order by manipulating not only people, but entire countries. He wants to take the focus off the Mideast, and bring back The Cold War to put the world’s ire back where it belongs.  He hires Dick Pender, former White House staffer and spinmaster, founder of Pender and Associates, a highly profitable perception magician who specializes in “perception management.” ("Dick, I need a war.")  Perception management does not spin facts or stories; it prefers to manufacture the facts and sell them to the naïve public as true. ('Why waste time trying to discover the truth, when you can so easily create it?')  Creed needs a war to boost sagging arms sales; Pender produces a fabricated “You Tube” type video, consisting of doctored news footage, and an actor, Konstantin, who claims thousands are being killed by a “Secret Russian Federation.”  The actor on the video speaks, 'It is time the world knew THE WHOLE TRUTH.' The result is that the world condemns Russia as mass murderers. A build up of arms between Russia and China begins in earnest.  The smear campaign works, enabling Creed to push and escalate an arms race, making his company wildly profitable.

            Shaw, a mystery man with no past, working for a super secret agency of the US government, has lived many lives outwitting terrorists, drug lords, skinhead and international wrong doers. He is a James Bond-like figure, and Baldacci’s most intriguing character.  As a hired gun, it is his job to find out who and what is behind this great fabrication.  He works for this agency under duress (they’ve planted an explosive tracking device in his arm).  He’d like to retire and settle down with his fiancee, Anna Fischer, who works for the Phoenix Group think tank.  Unfortunately, the think tank is one of the pawns in the Creed/Pender network.  The book really begins to heat up, when Anna sends an e-mail critical of the invented Russian story to an Internet blogger. By accident she has put her man into the dead center of this controversy. A team of supposed Russian hit men invade the Phoenix Group and kill everyone in the building --- including Anna. When Shaw learns of this, he re-ups with his agency and vows to find and destroy the people behind this massacre.

            A fourth figure in this novel is Katie James, a journalist, who has written a story that turns out to be completely false, and return from Afghanistan an alcoholic barely able to handle her new assignment, the obit column.  A two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner, disgraced and demoted, she is determined to get back into the limelight by landing a major story.  Inadvertently, she stumbles on to an operation involving Shaw, who saves her life, but condemns her to life on the run with him.  She may have finally found the biggest story of her life; that is if Shaw can keep them both alive.  She and Shaw are on the run throughout the U.S. and Europe, just a half step ahead of the killers while trying to work out just what is the whole truth. 

Baldacci’s tale is striking on several levels.  Well written, great prose, spy-like dialogue and breathtaking suspense make this a great political thriller. The Shaw is a character we hope to see a lot more of.  I get the feeling that Baldacci could create a whole series of thrillers around this guy.

Baldacci is the master of engrossing political tomes that are centered on frightening modern realities.  The ease that the communications made through the ‘Net can be misused to mislead is a disturbing thought-provoking concept. Video is so easily distributed to your MySpace and Facebook pages, that mass movements, commercial and political, can be created overnight.  No one is better at warning about the modern day Big Lie like David Baldacci.  Big Brother meets You Tube in this one of kind international thriller. Bond and Bourne have nothing on Baldacci.  This is an international spy thriller that you just cannot put down.