Sunday, October 2, 2011

Hell's Cornder by David Baldacci


Hell's Corner (Flipkart.com, Kindle edition, my user review on Amazon.com)
3 stars
Fast-paced thriller, page-turner, yet curiously slow and a little formulaic.
This is a pulp fiction thriller that almost does what it is supposed to do - entertain you for three hours without straining the gray cells. Ignore the wafer thin plot, the innumerable holes in the wafer-thin plot, and the curiously fast-paced narrative that still takes a long time to get anywhere.

A bomb explodes at Lafayette Park, just as the motorcade of the British Prime Minister exits the White House. Oliver Stone (aka John Carr) is called out from retirement(?) and requested by the President to go after the drug cartel (Mexicans and Russians) that is pumping drugs into the country. Then he is drafted to investigate the terrorist bombing. Promising premise, and there are several intriguing twists introduced, but never taken to their fullest conclusions. They are abandoned midway for even more twists, that yet again fail to culminate in any sort of nail-biting finish.

Since this is the fifth installment in the "Camel Club" series, and since I have not read the previous four, I have to assume that the earlier ones would have been better, and their success would have driven this fifth.

http://www.davidbaldacci.com/
Hell's Corner - David Baldacci site
http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/books_9781609413859.htm

Kindle Excerpt:


Hell's Corner

Hell's Corner from Flipkart.com
Absolute Power from Flipkart.com
Camel Club from Flipkart.com
The Camel Club
Kindle link: Hell's Corner




© 2011, Abhinav Agarwal. All rights reserved.