[close] Few crime novelists have been as successful as David Baldacci, and The Camel Club joins an illustrious collection. In such books as Absolute Power and Saving Faith, he forged a reputation as an adroit and imaginative writer, while with Wish You Well, he enriched his already accomplished characterisation. Baldacci is particularly good at the dynamics of conflict within a family as much as external threat, and without ever trying to manipulate the reader's emotions, he had us involved in a dramatic and affecting narrative that dealt with issues of personal choice quite as cogently as with the large-scale emotions of the plot.

Subsequently, Hour Game was an innovative spin on a familiar theme, featuring Baldacci's series characters: the tall, athletic Michelle Maxwell and the brilliant aesthete Sean King, both ex-Secret Service personnel who were obliged to leave their jobs under a cloud. The duo encountered some pretty nasty things in Hour Game, which added new levels of gruesomeness, with the decomposed body of a young woman found arranged in a bizarre position, while two teenagers are bloodily slaughtered having sex in a car.

The Camel Club, however, is both similar to and different from Baldacci's other books. We meet an enigmatic figure, Oliver Stone (one wonders why Baldacci chose the name of a well-known film director for this character), a man with no past. His occupation appears to be permanent protestor outside the White House, member of a cabal of believers in all available conspiracy theories, who are, collectively, The Camel Club. But (as in the author's signature book, Absolute Power) the group stumbles across a murder that they're not supposed to see--a murder rigged to appear as suicide. And, as in the earlier book, Stone and his friends find themselves involved in a very dangerous plot, reaching to the upper echelons of Washington society.

While Baldacci may be ploughing a field he's worked before, he remains a master of the complex, character-driven thriller.

--Barry Forshaw

[close]