Review: The Simple Truth

The Simple Truth by David Baldacci
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Had this book been written by anyone other than David Baldacci I may have rated it slightly higher. However, Baldacci one of my favorite authors and I’ve grown to expect nothing less than perfection from him.

While this book is a serviceable thriller about a government conspiracy and murder cover-up, it lacks the normal level of finesse and plotting than I know from David. As other reviewers have stated, it does get off to an incredibly slow start and I’m not quite sure what the purpose of the book is for about the first half.

I did not feel connected to the characters and had a hard time keeping all of them straight. The plot seemed to have a variety of different angles, none of which were fully fleshed out. I think any of the subplots could have either been dropped in favor of fleshing out the others, or picked as the main theme.

I did enjoy the theme of family, as this has proven to be a good theme to parallel action, as shown in the Fast and Furious movies. While the ending is good, it doesn't make up for the rest of the book.

At the end of the day, I find this to be a rare David Baldacci misfire and would recommend passing on this. However I fully know that even the best author has an off day and it has not tainted my overall opinion of his writing.

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