Book Review – The Guilty

My heart fell when I read Baldacci’s letter prefacing the book, in which he writes that he wants to show that Robie is not infallible, and that “he has emotions just like anybody else”. Frankly put, this is not how I like my assassins. Baldacci adds that this novel “is slightly different from others in this series” because in it Robie is confronted by his own past rather than a mission.

As a reader who prefers my men of mystery to remain mysterious, I resigned myself to disappointment, but read on nonetheless. To my welcome surprise Baldacci gets it right. Somehow, the reasons for Robie’s fallibility are plausible, and for his emotion, excusable. He lives to fight another day no less of an assassin than he was before, all with the help, of course, of his sidekick Jessica Reel.

It is indeed a page-turner, just a pity the pages fell out as fast as I turned them. The whole of chapter four will have to be glued back in, and everything up to about chapter seven is in danger. I can only hope this is because I was reading a sample copy.