Sunday February 22, 2009

Writing chops lift plot

Review by MARTIN SPICE

DIVINE JUSTICE
By David Baldacci
Publishers: Grand Central Publishing, 387 pages,
ISBN 978-0446536523

I AM a stranger to David Baldacci’s previous books featuring John Carr and the Camel Club, so I did not start Divine Justice with any sense of continuity from his previous book, Stone Cold, and came to his characters, well … stone cold. This may have made a small difference to my grasp of what was going on but let me also assure potential readers that Divine Justice does stand alone without any real knowledge of its prequel necessary.

John Carr, the “most wanted man in America”, has just eliminated two very high profile bad guys who by rights and by office should be good guys, namely Senator Roger Simpson of Alabama and Carter Gray, head of the CIA. That these hoods deserved to die by long distance ‘scope shots from a master assassin’s rifle is a given, so there is no point in worrying about them. They are dead and good riddance. These were bad guys in a book where the distinction between the good guys and the bad guys is absolutely crystal clear. Baldacci may be accused of many things but muddying the ethical waters is not one of them.

John Carr’s nickname, or action name, or whatever, is “Oliver Stone” because he served in Vietnam and Oliver Stone the movie director also made macho films about Vietnam (Geddit? Good!). When the book opens, Stone has just survived a dive off the top of a 9m cliff after pot-shotting Simpson and Gray within a few hours of each other, and resumes his disguise as a thickly bearded, thickly spectacled, crippled half-wit, a role he has been playing for the last four months as cover.

That this scene has more credibility in the reading than in the summary says something for Balducci’s writing skills!

Having established his innocence by appropriate grunting (he can’t talk either) when quizzed by FBI agents scouring the area, he then “says” goodbye to his hillbilly boss and takes a train to New Orleans.

At around this point you have to feel sorry for Oliver. I mean, there he is, a couple of high level assassinations under his belt, a cover good enough to dupe the local FBI oafs, and off to New Orleans to hide out when … his good nature just cannot stop him getting involved in the defence of a young man on the train who is being given a serious beating by three thugs.

Rather than give his name (which one?) or show an ID, Oliver gets off the train and accompanies the young man back to mama in a small mining town called Divine. Sadly, if Oliver thinks he has died and gone to heaven then he is about to be severely disabused.

He learns the hard way that he is being pursued by agent numero uno, Joe Knox. Joe is a good guy on a bad assignment, a position he has been put in by the evil, Machiavellian, all round bad ass and obnoxious former army general, Macklin Hayes, who has the best name in the book but the worst manners.

As Knox closes on Oliver, the Camel Club rally round. I was not in on the birth of the Camel Club in earlier novels but it would be fair to say that they are a disparate and eccentric bunch. Caleb Shaw is a librarian, hulking Reuben Rhodes is a Vietnam vet, Alex Ford is a veteran Secret Service Agent, and Annabelle Conroy is an inventive con artist.

What they have in common is that they have pasts that are different to their presents, and they just lurrve Oliver because they know what a good guy he is and they would do anything for him. And they do.

In a plot that gets ever sillier as it goes on, the Camel Club tracks Oliver down and then helps him to get out of the mess that is Divine. This apparently prosperous small mining town has a bag full of secrets that would give anyone sleepless nights, even leaving aside the murders, the suicide, the drug running and the maximum security prison.

Enough of the plot, however. The somewhat surprising thing about all this is that Baldacci does manage to carve a half decent thriller out of some pretty unpromising and unlikely material.

The first part of the book is the strongest. Stone is a compelling enough character and we warm to his obvious “good guy” status despite the fact that he is a professional assassin. The plotline of an expert agent trying to track down another works well and there is a certain tension in the “will he, won’t he catch him?” that grips.

In the early stages of the book, Knox’s motives and allegiances are also unclear which introduces a welcome whiff of grey into the otherwise black and white moral landscape.

Reality checks in reading the Divine sections of Divine Justice are not really to be encouraged but in truth there is nothing dafter there than the average B movie, and we are all happy enough to watch those on wet afternoons. So, if you have a wet afternoon … enjoy!