It Ain't Divine, and There Ain't No Justice, Either
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Author: David Baldacci
Title: Divine Justice Genre: thriller If you thought you'd seen the last of Oliver Stone when he disappeared over a cliff in the last reel of David Baldacci's Stone Cold, you were wrong - no matter how hard you applauded the demise of the character (and, one might have hoped, the Camel Club series). Erstwhile "triple-six" assassin John Carr, thought dead by his CIA minders but reborn as graveyard caretaker Stone, moves on to his next life after messily dispatching the men who'd ruined his life and taken away his wife and daughter. The arguably unkind Fates deposit Stone, operating the new alias "Ben Thomas," in the remote coal-mining village of Divine, Virginia. Though his sojourn in Divine might seem divine - thanks to a lusty and uncommonly wealthy widow - Carr, errr, Stone, errr, Thomas soon detects the stench of something rotten in the state of Virginia. Weeping ex-quarterbacks, "suicidal" brides-to-be, and exploding mobile homes are among the hints... Of course, Carr, errr, Stone didn't get away as cleanly as one might expect of a triple-sixer: and the detestable ex-general Macklin Hayes has put his faithful tracker on the case. Once John Knox finds Carr, errr, ...enough, already! Once Knox finds his man, Macklin'll make certain that whoever he is disappears for once and for all. To find him, Knox starts with the other members of the Camel Club - in the process tipping off his friends that their buddy's still kicking. Guess who also decides to take a Divine vacation? And guess who finds out that the bucolic little town is just as full of snakes - the human kind - as Washington, DC? Ummm, that'd be the Camel Club - though they really should be calling themselves the "Mission Impossible Club" by now! David Baldacci's fourth Camel Club thriller, Divine Justice, takes his little band of jolly elves on a field trip to the boonies. Citified as the clubsters may be, they're still clearly up to the task of outwitting the local bumpkins in the hinterlands - not to mention one of the best black ops guys in the biz (at least for a while). They get to unveil their hidden talents - whodathunk a mild-mannered librarian harbored NASCAR-driver chops - in their quest to rescue who's-his-face from the evil pursuit. That's all well and good, but ultimatelyDivine Justice does a poor job of transplanting this bunch of city slickers into the country: an abandoned coal drift might be more or less the same shape as the steam tunnels under DC, but in reality it's worlds different. Clearly desperate to keep his three-book mini-franchise alive after - apparently - killing off his lead character, Baldacci not only drags the actors out of their urban comfort zone but also wrenches his plotting from its comfort zone, too. With a contrived plot that might have been lifted straight from some B spaghetti western, Divine Justice drags throughout - clearly inferior to even the earlier novels in the series (The Camel Club, The Collectors, Stone Cold), none of which was any great shakes to begin with. As always, Baldacci depends heavily on large doses of coincidence, and stereotypes his characters so severely that one can almost unerringly predict the next words out of their mouths in a tight spot. Apparently for fun in Divine Justice, he off-handedly dismisses small-towners as backward and blithely labels coal-miners as universally drug-addicted (must've read that one article in the Washington Post...). No doubt about it, Baldacci's into the simplistic view. All this does not sit well when one remembers that Baldacci broke into print with the taut and tightly-plotted thriller Absolute Power, which became a Clint Eastwood movie of the same name. Lo, how the author hath fallen... All in all, Divine Justice is a failure: Baldacci's not so much taken the Club out of the street as haven taken the street out of the Club. In doing so he didn't create a more vivid, dynamic Camel Club - he created a more boring one - and it's a bunch that weren't all that interesting to begin with. The continuous juxtaposition of coincidence against stereotype has run its course: I propose we adjourn the meeting and disband the Club. Keywords: Abby Riker, addiction Alex Ford, Annabelle Conroy, Appalachia, Ben Thomas, black ops, Caleb Shaw, Camel Club, coal, drugs, Divine, Joe Knox, John Carr, methadone, mobile home, money-laundering, murder, Oliver Stone, oxycontin, quarterback, Shakespeare, smuggling, sniper, supermax If the author cared: he'd know that it's not the pupil that gives an eye its color, it's the iris. all content copyright © 2014 by scmrak
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