Book Review - Split Second by Dabid Baldacci
Sunday, 14 June 2009 02:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
byslantedlightAs part of a catching-up day...
My landlady loaned me this ages ago, saying that it was really really good and she couldn't put it down, and I had to read it, which is quite the advertisement.
So I did, and... I did keep reading it, and I wanted to know what the ending was, but bizarrely enough, even as I read along, I was thinking that it was really bad in so many ways.
It's about an American Secret Service agent whose career was destroyed when he was distracted during a job and his protectee (a right-wing presidential candidate) was shot. It's also about an American Secret Service agent whose career is in the process of being destroyed because she let a protectee (a right-wing presidential candidate, iirc) out of sight and he was kidnapped. Various other bodies start to pile up, the two once-agents get together and work on building up some unresolved sexual tension, an ex-lover of Agent 1 is brought in for some extra excitement, and the three of them team up to try and solve the case.
The failed-agent thing has a promising darkness about it, but unfortunately said failed-agent simply turned back to his original law degree, set up a thriving practice in a beautiful town by the mountains, and built his own house from scratch which is absolutely beautiful but is empty of all soul. Enter beautiful Secret Service Agent 2.
So it sort of falls into cliche pretty quickly. Even the grammar isn't very good in some places, and although the plot was fairly interesting I still wasn't convinced by the way the characters were brought together in some cases. And everyone was handsome, and beautiful, and incredibly talented... it was a Hollywood movie, in a book. Dialogue, plot, descriptions - they were absolutely what I'd have seen if I'd watched this as a movie. Which I probably wouldn't have done because it isn't quite unusual enough/thoughtful enough to make a noticeable movie, or at least one that I'd notice. A medium box-office hit starring some square-chinned male Hollywood star, and a couple of very thin but feisty female Hollywood stars. They'd probably make the villain-wot-did-it English.
And yet I kept reading until I'd finished it - which took about 3 seconds, despite being 597 pages long... I'm not sorry I read it, but it probably mostly reminds me why I don't pick up this bestselling-thriller genre very often... *g*
My landlady loaned me this ages ago, saying that it was really really good and she couldn't put it down, and I had to read it, which is quite the advertisement.
So I did, and... I did keep reading it, and I wanted to know what the ending was, but bizarrely enough, even as I read along, I was thinking that it was really bad in so many ways.
It's about an American Secret Service agent whose career was destroyed when he was distracted during a job and his protectee (a right-wing presidential candidate) was shot. It's also about an American Secret Service agent whose career is in the process of being destroyed because she let a protectee (a right-wing presidential candidate, iirc) out of sight and he was kidnapped. Various other bodies start to pile up, the two once-agents get together and work on building up some unresolved sexual tension, an ex-lover of Agent 1 is brought in for some extra excitement, and the three of them team up to try and solve the case.
The failed-agent thing has a promising darkness about it, but unfortunately said failed-agent simply turned back to his original law degree, set up a thriving practice in a beautiful town by the mountains, and built his own house from scratch which is absolutely beautiful but is empty of all soul. Enter beautiful Secret Service Agent 2.
So it sort of falls into cliche pretty quickly. Even the grammar isn't very good in some places, and although the plot was fairly interesting I still wasn't convinced by the way the characters were brought together in some cases. And everyone was handsome, and beautiful, and incredibly talented... it was a Hollywood movie, in a book. Dialogue, plot, descriptions - they were absolutely what I'd have seen if I'd watched this as a movie. Which I probably wouldn't have done because it isn't quite unusual enough/thoughtful enough to make a noticeable movie, or at least one that I'd notice. A medium box-office hit starring some square-chinned male Hollywood star, and a couple of very thin but feisty female Hollywood stars. They'd probably make the villain-wot-did-it English.
And yet I kept reading until I'd finished it - which took about 3 seconds, despite being 597 pages long... I'm not sorry I read it, but it probably mostly reminds me why I don't pick up this bestselling-thriller genre very often... *g*
