Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

David Baldacci is a terrific storyteller and obviously a phenomenally successful author. He also happens to be a terrific guy who has used his success to support/establish charities. I had the chance to meet him when he traveled overseas to do book events on U.S. military bases in Europe. I have a lot of respect for him because I saw firsthand how he interacted with our military personnel and dependents. Which is why it’s difficult for me to write a negative review for THE ESCAPE. But I don’t have a choice. This is not an attack on the author – it’s simply not a good book. I like the book’s premise. Puller is a military investigator. His father is a military legend. His brother is a former soldier in a military prison for treason. Now his brother escapes from prison and Puller must track him down. That’s good – and I wish the book had stuck with that premise. But it morphed into a hundred other things, and the result was a convoluted mess. I also thought the dialogue was terrible. It felt like the publishers went to print with an early draft of the book. On one page, Puller is yelling at Knox (the female he’s been teamed up with unwittingly to track his brother) that he can’t trust her because maybe she’s a spy, or maybe she has a secret agenda, or maybe a dozen other things … and then two pages later, Puller is all “Knox I’m on board with you, I trust you one hundred percent” … and then two pages later, “I can’t trust you!” … and two pages after that, “I’ll tell you everything because I trust you.” It’s like a bad soap opera except it doesn’t end. It just goes on and on. Then we go from a prison escape, to investigating why his brother was in prison to begin with, to conspiracy theories with bad guys who aren’t scary, just laughable. The plot twists were ridiculous. The “tension” was contrived, as if arguing over whether or not we can trust each other is supposed to make the book tense and dramatic. I really wish Baldacci would take more time between books and go back to the process he was using for his earlier works. There was a time when a new Baldacci book really meant something – but honestly, if THE ESCAPE is indicative of his future works then he’ll still be a great guy, but he’ll also be an author that I no longer read.