** spoiler alert ** I've read or stopped reading bad books before, this one however is car crash literature. For believablity sake alone I would urge anyone I cared about not to bother with this. I am 2/3 of the way through and want to toss this across the room. If it were a movie I would have been gone long before now.

Baldacci sets the scene and develops interesting characters as well as adequately describing their personal worldview. The something happens and the characters start doing things that create plot twists but no sane person able to walk and chew gum at the same time would believe.

A Supreme Court Clerk (Michael) proposes to another Supreme Court Clerk (Sara) even though they aren't dating. In fact apart from work they don't see each other. Sara turns him down because there is "no spark"

There "is" however someone she does think about and that just happens to be Michael's brother, John who she has never officially met but seen twice in court.

Well as luck would have it Michael is murdered after he gets personally involved in an appeal that has been filed with the Supreme Court.

Michael's brother John (also a lawyer but once a cop) decides to investigate the case and of course he and Sarah......(see what I mean about ridiculous?)To make it worse she is removed from her job at the Supreme Court, a position she worked all her adult life to attain and seemingly doesn't care because she and John had sex the night before......

Add a handy (but implausible) Army conspiracy, an innocent patsy who has spent 25 years in the stockade for a crime he didn't commit (and of course the Army can't have John and Sarah uncovering their whole sinister plan) as well as one or more Supreme Court Justices that are a tad shady, oh and a perhaps crooked US Senator.....

Throw in an apparently corrupt FBI agent who has the ability to frame John for his brother's death (after the fact, I'm sure Mr Baldacci hopes we didn't see that snafu)

Baldacci can weave an interesting tale, and writes well, but at places in this story the plot is so thin its hardly there at all.

I give this 1 star because I couldn't give it half a star. In my view a terrible (TERRIBLE) book.