The Simple Truth

Author: David Baldacci

Description: Rufus Harms is in prison, he was convicted 25 years ago of the killing a young girl. When he receives a letter from the army, everything turns upside down. The appeal he wants to submit to the Supremem Court disappears, and lawyers involved to find out the truth die. When Harms realises that he has no chance to win legally, he escapes and the hunting starts.

John Fiske is helping the police to investigate the murder of his brother, who visited Harms before his escape. As he discovers more and more clues, and with the help of Sara Evans, clerk at the Court, he gets closer to the truth, a conspiracy unfolds involving justices, ex soldiers and FBI agents. John finds out the secret, which doomed Harms to lifelong sentence.

What I think:

I do like a good thriller, especially with twists and turns. The first few pages of this book are so well written, that I found it promising. Reading further I was wondering if it was necessary to introduce so many characters in the beginning. Now I think it wasn't. Some of them could appear later, and the first part of the book could be better paced.

Baldacci kept the secret hidden until the crisis, which was supposed to give suspense. Actually I found it out at the half of the book, so the final bang was not so loud for me. But I liked the twist at the end, when the suspected bad guy turned out to be a good one, and vice versa.

While I was curious what happen next, the book was too long and sometimes too slow for my taste. The characters were OK, even there were an interesting family connection between the Fiske brothers and the parents.

If you have some free time to kill, it's an OK read, but there are plenty of better books out there.

My rating: three stars.