The Winner - Softcover

Baldacci, David

4.13

49,963 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1447287622 ISBN 13: 9781447287629

Publisher: Pan Books, 2015

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The Winner by David Baldacci is the taut tale of a woman forced to take a gamble with her future, from one of the world's bestselling thriller writers.

LuAnn Tyler is a single parent striving to escape a life of endless poverty. Then a mysterious Mr Jackson makes her an offer he thinks no one can refuse: a guarantee to be the winner of the $100 million lottery. But LuAnn won't do it.

Less than twenty-four hours later, she is fighting for her life and running from a false murder charge. Jackson's offer – and its condition that she leave the country forever – seems her only hope.

Ten years later, LuAnn secretly returns to the United States to begin a new life with Matthew Riggs, a man whose origins are as murky as her own. But a canny reporter has picked up her trail, as have the FBI – and Jackson. Matt Riggs is the only person who can help her. But is help what Matt intends or is he too closing in for the kill?

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Review:

What would you do to change your life? LuAnn is beautiful, young and dirt poor. She's married to a low-level drugs dealer whose infidelities and incompetent double-dealing put her and her child's lives at risk. Enter master-criminal "Jackson" who offers her vast wealth if she agrees to help him fiddle the lottery. She refuses until she finds herself on the run from false charges of murder. After years abroad she returns because she wants her daughter to be an American teenager. Can she escape the FBI, an inquisitive journalist and the murderous and endlessly ingenious Jackson?

The Winner is a departure for Baldacci. LuAnn is as plucky and resourceful as the heroines of Absolute Power and Total Control, but the plot she inhabits is a new departure for him. Normally he shows us a dark vision of how things really work, but here he brings to life and makes plausible what might have been pulp cliches. As in the description of Jackson, a master of disguise: "Sitting across from her was her double, or the double of the woman she had just become. The same short red hair, facial complexion, crooked nose, everything--it was as though she had suddenly discovered a twin". What's more, his method of rigging lotteries is clever and convincing enough to worry lottery organisers the world over. Perhaps the sunniest and least cynical of Baldacci's thrillers, The Winner is an intelligent, exciting and deeply moral read whose switchback plot is full of surprises and touching moments. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

The page-turner of the season (The Times)

Baldacci is still peerless (Sunday Times)

One of the world's biggest-selling thriller writers, Baldacci needs no introduction . . . Brilliant plotting, heart-grabbing action and characters to die for (Daily Mail)

Baldacci inhabits the skin of his creations - tripping us up with unexpected empathy and subtle identification (Sunday Express)

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