Split Second: 1 (King & Maxwell) - Hardcover

Baldacci, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0446533122 ISBN 13: 9780446533126

Publisher: Hachette International, 2003

Synopsis

Two Secret Service agents sworn to guard their protectees lost them in a single moment...and in this #1 New York Times bestseller, they're about to learn that the violence has just begun.

Michelle Maxwell has just wrecked her promising career at the Secret Service. Against her instincts, she let a presidential candidate out of her sight for the briefest moment and the man whose safety was her responsibility vanished into thin air. Sean King knows how the younger agent feels. Eight years earlier, the hard-charging Secret Service agent allowed his attention to be diverted for a split second. And the candidate he was protecting was gunned down before his eyes. Now Michelle and Sean are about to see their destinies converge.

Drawn into a maze of lies, secrets, and deadly coincidences, the two discredited agents uncover a shocking truth: that the separate acts of violence that shattered their lives were really a long time in the making--and are a long way from over

About this title

Review:

Split Second is David Baldacci at the top of his well-informed game, with a real sense of what the Secret Servicemen who protect the President and presidential candidates think about the job and how it feels to fail. Sean King looked away at the wrong moment and a man died; his career ended and he has spent eight years rebuilding a life. When Michelle Maxwell makes a similar mistake, she becomes convinced that there is a link between the man she lost to kidnappers and the man Sean failed to protect--and the more she learns, the more she can prove.

This is an odd couple thriller--Sean and Michelle have radically different attitudes to the job they both did well--and ingeniously put together in terms of what it tells us about the shadowy villain manipulating events and what it delays telling us about the past. It is a well-informed thriller that wears its research lightly--it has a sense of how it feels to see every large room as a potential killing ground in which you have to protect very vulnerable public men, and some charming scenes of budding romantic comedy. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

"Baldacci's brain-teasing plot leaves you wanting more...high scoring shoot-'em-up."

About this edition

• Publisher: Hachette International
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0446533122
• ISBN 13: 9780446533126
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 544