In a world of secrets, human genius is power.
And sometimes it is simply deadly...
A three-hour drive from Washington, D.C., two clandestine institutions face each other across a heavily guarded river. One is the world's most unusual laboratory, whose goals and funding are a mystery. The other is an elite CIA training camp shrouded in secrecy. Now a man and a woman are about to run a gauntlet between these two puzzle factories, straight into a furious struggle to exploit a potentially world-shattering discovery--and keep some other secrets underwraps forever...
Former secret service agents turned private investigators Sean King and Michelle Maxwell have seen their lives splinter around them. Michelle lies unconscious ina hospital bed after a night of suicidal violence. And Sean is forced to take on a thankless investigation into the mutder of a scientist just inside the CIA's razor-wire fence near Williamsburg, Virginia.
Soon he is uncovering layer after layer of disinformation that shields a stunning world filled with elite mathematics, physicists, war heroes, spies, and deadly field agents. Amid more murder, a seemingly autistic girl's extraordinary genius, and a powerful breakthrough in the realm of classified codes, Sean soon learns enough to put his life at risk. Now more than ever, he needs Michelle--at her best--to help stop a conspiracy of traitors operating in the shadow of the White House itself.
From Michelle's courageous struggle to defeat her long-buried personal demons to a centuries-old secret that surfaces in the heat of action, SIMPLE GENIUS pulses with stunning, high-intensity suspense. The heroes of Split Second and Hour Game, David Baldacci's #1 New York Times bestsellers, are back--as you've never seen them before.
With a series of ever more accomplished novels, David Baldacci has been building something of a reputation for himself as one of the most reliable practitioners of the modern crime/thriller novel. The emphasis is, of course, usually on Baldacci's métier, the legal arena, and it's clearly the field he is most comfortable in -- as in
Simple Genius. His long-term protagonists, Sean King and Michelle Maxwell, have found that the aftermath of their last case has stayed with them in an unpleasant way, and Michelle is obliged to undergo therapy. Sean, his financial circumstances straightened, takes on a job. A scientist is dead in a nearby town -- the scene of the (possible) crime is a clandestine research institute peopled by a large cast of neurotic scientists. There are secrets galore to be unearthed here, and just across the river from the institute there is another clandestine institution, the CIA training ground, Camp Peary, where the dead man's body was originally discovered. Sean finds himself at bay, with several government security services on his tail, even as Michelle struggles to regain her mental equilibrium.
As in such page-turning thrillers as Hour Game and Split Second, David Baldacci knows how to keep the reader thoroughly engrossed, and never loses the capacity to surprise us with the revelations that his beleaguered hero and heroine become party to. This is one of the longest Baldacci books, weighing in at nearly 600 pages, and there are lengthy appendices after the novel proper has finished. These may not retrospectively add to the appeal of the book of the reader has just finished, but they show that Baldacci has -- as always -- done his homework. --Barry Forshaw
