The Camel Club (The Camel Club, #1) in Crazy Challenge Connection

Nov 23, 2016 Susan rated it it was ok

Shelves: adventure-thriller, dicklit, 2016, cultural-usa

Meh. This book could have been better, maybe even up to three stars, if it had had some better editing with chopping out of huge sections of repetitive parts and navel gazing on the part of too many of the characters.

There were too many extraneous details given in the book - e.g. does the reader really need to know where the lumber came from for the president's desk? This one did not. However, there are also parts where the details are lacking - e.g. I had to look up what an RPG is because Bald Meh. This book could have been better, maybe even up to three stars, if it had had some better editing with chopping out of huge sections of repetitive parts and navel gazing on the part of too many of the characters.

There were too many extraneous details given in the book - e.g. does the reader really need to know where the lumber came from for the president's desk? This one did not. However, there are also parts where the details are lacking - e.g. I had to look up what an RPG is because Baldacci did not give the curtesy of spelling out the acronym anywhere even though that information was relevant to that part of the plot.

The navel gazing by too many of the characters also got really tedious. Every last one of the terrorists had his (and once - gasp! even her - see below re. female characters) time to mull over his particular reasons for undertaking their actions. So too did virtually every other character in the book. Overall, learning about the motivations for the characters is of interest to me. However, it becomes somewhat less interesting when it is done over and over and over and over... and over again, often by the same character and often using nearly word-for-word the same turn of phrase.

The book is also disingenuous and so somewhat dishonest. Baldacci writes - again repetitively - that Islam is generally a peaceful religion, that the average Muslim person wants what any average person does - peace, health, ability to support themselves and their families, opportunities, etc. All of that is accurate and true. However, Baldacci then creates an entire terrorist sect of Muslims plotting against the government. No, Baldacci, you cannot go to the lowest common denominator and demonize an entire group of billions of people in order to sell your book then 'make it OK' but adding a disclaimer that 'but these are good people please just ignore the plot I have created against them' even if you do the disclaimer with the mind-numbing repetitiveness of the whole book.

I will leave out the parts that were just too unbelievable to be true - e.g. Hemmingway dodging machine gun bullets to kill a terrorist with his finger? Seriously?!? Also, and I need to put this one in, Baldacci insisted on putting in the trite myth of being able to kill someone by slamming their nose cartilage into their brain, OK at least he used cartilage rather than bone (there no bones in the nose) but still this is IMPOSSIBLE. You cannot kill someone this way.

Finally, the treatment of women. I get that Baldacci is a male author and that he seems to be writing to sell to the masses and so focuses on the male characters (a sad statement on our society but that is a different topic). However, the women in this book added virtually nothing to the plot, and were insultingly shallow and stereotypical, and again going to the lowest common denominator. Often I reduce ratings and reviews of the book for lack of good female characters, but in this case I must admit this time it would have been better without these characters at all. They were:

-a terrorist (should I say 'yay! a woman broke into a male-dominated field'?) (a terrorist who had to be smacked, literally (although 'had to be smacked' is problematic itself) out of her emotional breakdown over a man)
-Love Interest 1
-Love Interest 2
-Love Interest 3 (who was also barely part of the plot)
-selfish, American wife cheating repeatedly on her poor, hard-working husband.
-Snarky, over-bearing bitch who needed a man to save her from herself and who betrayed her partner.

Overall, the book pretended to be deep but was essentially a bogged down car-chase movie in novel form. I will not be looking up other books in this series. ...more

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Apr 20, 2023 Maggie Shanley rated it liked it

Shelves: suggested-for-me

Oliver Stone is standing guard at the White house gates, not as a secret service agent, but in protest asking for the truth. Coincidentally the spot he chooses to meet his conspiracy theory friends is the site of a murder, solving that murder will lead to international intrigue with a threat of nuclear devastation. A bit long and convoluted with a few too many characters, this was not my favorite Baldacci. However, I am glad I read it and I learned more about some of the early action of the Cam ...more

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